Minutes of a meeting of the Nelson Tasman Civil Defence Emergency Management Group
Held in the Council Chamber, Civic House, 110 Trafalgar Street, Nelson
On Tuesday 1 August 2017, commencing at 9.00am
Present: Her Worship the Mayor R Reese, Nelson City Councillor P Matheson, His Worship the Mayor of Tasman R Kempthorne and Tasman District Councillor T King
In Attendance: Acting Chief Executive (D Hammond), Councillor Mel Courtney, Nelson City Council Group Manager Infrastructure (A Louverdis), Group Manager Corporate Services (N Harrison), Senior Strategic Adviser (N McDonald), , Emergency Management Officer (R Ball), Policy Advisor, (G Thorpe), and Administration Adviser (R Byrne), Tasman District Council Corporate Services Manager (M Drummond) and Governance Services Officer (H Simpson)
Apologies were received for absence for lateness from Nelson City Council Mayor R Reese and Tasman District Council Deputy Mayor T King.
There were no updates to the Interests Register, and no interests with items on the agenda were declared.
3.1 11 April 2017
Document number M2497, agenda pages 5 - 10 refer.
|
MOVED Cr Matheson/Mayor Kempthorne That the Committee Confirms the minutes of the meeting of the Committee, held on 11 April 2017, as a true and correct record. CARRIED |
4. Civil Defence Emergency Management draft Group Plan
Document number R7933, agenda pages 11 - 105 refer.
Attendance: Tasman District Councillor King joined the meeting at 9.05am.
The idea of a centralised Incident Management Team (IMT) was discussed. Mr Ball said that while having a more deployable centralised team would be beneficial, he would not recommend letting local arrangements fall away. He said that mixed models had proven to be successful with a centrally run IMT, while maintaining local volunteer capacity who understood local hazards. Councillors agreed that community response was beneficial and important to maintain. They discussed the necessity of maintaining these teams with regular training and resourcing.
Councillors discussed promoting regular, small stories about Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) locally particularly during peace time, to give awareness of Civil Defence and their profile and to keep the public’s consciousness that CDEM is working well.
Resilience of relay teams was discussed and long term resourcing of Community Controllers in isolated areas, particularly St Arnaud, Takaka and Murchison. Councillors discussed appointing controllers at large, who could be based anywhere. Mr Ball said that positions were resourced locally, with the exception of Murchison, which was the preference. He said that the Murchison community have acknowledged the difficulty with resourcing locally for the Murchison area. He said that in smaller communities, there is an issue with people already undertaking duplicate roles and uptake for Controller roles is low. One suggestion is to consider providing a small honorarium for the roles, which at present are completely voluntary. Councillors discussed the effectiveness of this incentive, which is used by Tasman District Council with community groups.
In response to a question, Mr Ball gave a summary of the process under the amended Act from emergency declaration to recovery. He said the Declaration of Emergency covers the response phase and once that expires the declaration gives power to the Emergency Manager. Mr Ball said that the amendment to the Act turns that role into a statutory appointment with powers by legislation, rather than just relying on those under delegation. He said that the process is essentially the same as the declaration process, with the District Mayor as most effective, followed by the Deputy Mayor and so on.
In response to a question, Nelson City Council Policy Adviser, Gabrielle Thorpe, said that CDEM had thought about information sharing and joint communications between the two Councils.
The importance of keeping the community aware while an event is happening was discussed. Councillors discussed using conference calling from CDEM to local areas and asked whether this had been written into the plan. Mr Ball said that level of operational detail had not been written into the plan but that this was the process that CDEM follow. He said that this is written into the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) as a step for the Duty Officer or Controller to operate.
In response to a question, Mr Ball confirmed that if the group has not declared an emergency then the Minister can declare a transition notice. He said that groups tended to err on the side of caution with a trend towards declaring earlier rather than later, particularly following recent emergency events of the last 5 years.
Councillors discussed including additional wording within the Controller at Large section to describe the operation supporting that role. They agreed to leave the matter of an honorarium as a discretionary function of each Council through their Long Term Plan processes.
They also discussed separate communication to the 5 year plan, packaged in a way that is enabling, empowering and supportive to the local community.
Councillors noted some minor corrections grammar and figures.
Attendance: Nelson City Council Mayor Reese joined the meeting at 9.55am.
|
That the Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Receives the report Civil Defence Emergency Management draft Group Plan (R7933) and its attachment (A1794436); and Approves release of the draft CDEM Group Plan for public consultation. CARRIED |
5. Copy of the report of the Group Emergency Management Office to the CDEM Coordinating Executive Group
Document number R8126, agenda pages 106 - 129 refer.
Funding for Alpine Fault Planning was discussed. Mr Ball said that an event caused by the southern alpine fault was considered to be of low likelihood, but that it would be a large scale event with considerable resourcing requirements.
Councillors again discussed the idea of an honorarium for Controller roles and also discussed funding for Lifelines.
Councillors noted an agreement had been signed to ensure continuity with incident management support groups such as Rural Fire. They also noted Alec Louverdis had completed steps to become a Group Controller and commended him on having been awarded national credentials.
In response to a question, Mr Ball advised Councillors that the reserve fund total was approximately $1million. He said that the total that needed to be retained for depreciation is about half of that amount.
The balance of the report was taken as read.
|
That the Coordinating Executive Group Receives the Report of the Emergency Management Office (R8126); and Agrees that the CDEM Group should continue to provide personnel and access to the Emergency Operations Centre to support Fire and Emergency NZ; and Appoints Paul Shattock as the Group’s Public Information Manager for the year July 2017-June 2018. CARRIED |
6. CDEM CEG (Coordinating Executive Group) - 14 July 2017
Document number M2760, agenda pages 130 - 135 refer.
|
That the CDEM Coordinating Executive Group Receives the unconfirmed minutes of a meeting of the CDEM CEG (Coordinating Executive Group), held on 14 July 2017. CARRIED |
|
That the Committee Excludes the public from the following parts of the proceedings of this meeting. The general subject of each matter to be considered while the public is excluded, the reason for passing this resolution in relation to each matter and the specific grounds under section 48(1) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 for the passing of this resolution are as follows: |
|
Item |
General subject of each matter to be considered |
Reason for passing this resolution in relation to each matter |
Particular interests protected (where applicable) |
|
1 |
Civil Defence Emergency Management Group Meeting - Public Excluded Minutes - 11 April 2017 |
Section 48(1)(a) The public conduct of this matter would be likely to result in disclosure of information for which good reason exists under section 7. |
The withholding of the information is necessary: · Section 7(2)(a) To protect the privacy of natural persons, including that of a deceased person. |
CARRIED
The meeting went into public excluded session at 9.55am and resumed in public session at 10.00am.
Please note that as the only business transacted in public excluded was to confirm the minutes, this business has been recorded in the public minutes. In accordance with the Local Government Official Information Meetings Act 1987, no reason for withholding this information from the public exists.
|
That the Committee Confirms the minutes of part of the meeting of the Civil Defence Emergency Management Group meeting, held with the public excluded on 11 April 2017, as a true and correct record. CARRIED |
8. Re-admittance of the Public
|
That the Group Re-admits the public to the meeting. CARRIED |
Tasman District Council Mayor Kempthorne thanked staff for their time and for presenting to the Committee. He provided a brief update of the meeting he had with Civil Defence Minister Nathan Guy at the recent Local Government New Zealand Conference. He said that there had been general discussion about regional civil defence with Nelson Tasman an example of two unitary authorities with joint management. The Minister had been interested to hear the management of that model works well.
Councillors discussed input across New Zealand to the Technical Advisory Group regarding the level of investment made into Civil Defence. Mr Ball said that he hoped that point had been well made throughout this process. He said that Ministry staff had asked for collective input and that input was given from controllers around investment in CDEM operatives and particularly professional development. Initial findings from the review should be available in the next month or so.
There being no further business the meeting ended at 10.13am.
Confirmed as a correct record of proceedings:
Chairperson
Date