Gore District Council's move to ditch an independent review into the falling out between its mayor and chief executive earlier this year is being questioned by some.
A local government expert believes it's the wrong call and said that rather than finding fault, the review would prevent a repeat of the past in other areas.
Gore councillors met on Tuesday afternoon to decide whether they wanted to push ahead with the inquiry after information about the relationship breakdown between the country's youngest mayor Ben Bell and chief executive Stephen Parry leaked in March.
The independent review was then agreed to in April, but since then terms of reference, a reviewer and budget allocation were never finalised. From then until now, it has been turbulent.
Long-standing councillor Bret Highsted resigned, there was a protest outside council calling for Parry's resignation, but councillors also called for Bell's resignation before later retracting that position.
A by-election was also called to replace Highsted.
And just last week, after more than 20 years, Parry resigned.
So now, councillors have unanimously decided to scrap the review altogether.
The council said it believes a review now would be "counterproductive" and they have "genuine concerns" about reopening past events as it "may reignite... experiences that [the council] seek to move on from".
"We [the council] no longer feel the review process is in the best interest of the Gore District Council, nor local government as a whole."
Those statements were made in a letter last month to the Department of Internal Affairs.
A spokesperson told 1News today: "Ultimately, councils are accountable to their communities, rather than [the DIA] for how they govern, and how they address their problems.
"The Department commends the Council for the progress made so far in restoring relationships between elected members and staff.
"The Department will continue to follow the progress of Gore District Council in the development of their key accountability document (the Long-term Plan) next year."
Mayor Bell said things are "significantly better now".
"We did a lot of workshops, a lot of training, and after speaking to the reviewers and trying to understand what would come out of the review, a lot of it was around those trainings and learnings," he said.
"So we thought, if we can enact those now, and we have, then we would be able to save the community $130,000 of unbudgeted expenditure and sort it out for ourselves.
"Another $130,000 for our ratepayers to stump up just wasn't the solution."
'It's not a private matter, it's an open public matter' - expert
Andrew Cardow is a professor at Massey University and has been following the Gore District Council saga.
He said the decision not to proceed with the independent review is both a good thing and a bad thing.
"The good thing is, they are all starting to act like grown-ups and get their act together and do what the people of Gore want them to do, which is govern the town.
"The bad thing is, there are going to be people who want to know why this event actually happened in the first place and why an elected mayor could not work with a career public servant or vice versa," he said.
He believes there needs to be more transparency over what happened over the past 12 months.
"I read the letter that the council sent to [the DIA] and basically, it's 'we're alright now'," he said.
"'We don't need to discuss it with anyone else, that's all a private matter'.
"Well, it's not a private matter, it's an open public matter as it involved elected members."
Cardow said there were still a lot of unanswered questions.
"It could happen again, not in Gore obviously, but it could happen anywhere else," he said.
"It would be useful to know exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened and what specific steps are being put in place to avoid it happening again. That is after all, the purpose of a review."
However, Bell said: "I feel like we have been transparent as we can be.
"There isn't a whole lot more to explore that we can go into without breaching privacy of individuals."
Cardow said the review's "not necessarily to find fault but to find how can we prevent such a thing happening in the future".
What do locals think?
1News hit the streets of Gore to gauge reaction from the independent review being dropped.
"If they've got nothing to hide, it'd be all out in the open and people can decide for themselves what they think," one person said.
Another said: "There's been a lot of talk about it, been reading about it in the papers most days.
"Maybe it's best for all of us just to carry on."
A third said: "We're a bit in the dark about it now, in a way. But I'd hope it's positive going forward."
'I hope they are on the right track' – former mayor
Tracy Hicks lost to Bell in last year's election by a historic eight votes.
While he has nothing to do with the council now, he knows the ins and outs of local government and was in the role of mayor in Gore for many years. He said it's "pretty hard to make judgement from the outside".
"I think if what they're saying is correct, and I've got no reason to doubt that, things are starting to gel better in the council… that's great, but we don't know," he said.
"There's a lot of work to do, we're 12 months down the track with a new council and I don't see a lot of evidence of some of the things that had been promised.
"I hope they're on the right track, time will tell."
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