Gore council's 'storm in a teacup' over councillor's 'gay' slur complaint over

Gore District councillors have decided not to further admonish a colleague who used a slur to describe a staff presentation, with some agreeing a code of conduct investigation caused unnecessary stress, time and money.

At a meeting on Tuesday she delivered a statement apologising if any staff were offended.

She said an independent investigation into the comment - prompted by a complaint from McKenzie - had caused stress, anxiety and sleepless nights.

Investigator James Cowan from Anderson Lloyd said Bruce should apologise, but he found the breach was neither significant nor serious, describing Bruce's use of the slur as a one-off incident.

He recommended that Bruce and McKenzie be invited to take part in voluntary mediation to address an apparent conflict between them.

At the meeting on Tuesday, from which McKenzie was absent, councillors voted to accept the findings, before discussing a motion to determine an appropriate consequence for Bruce.

Councillor Mel Cupit said the matter should be closed without any further action.

"Like the other two code of conducts we've had in recent times, I believe this one's also been a storm in a teacup. I know it's caused a lot of stress, wasted time, energy, money and distracted from the far more important work we should be focused on," she said.

"I do know councillor Bruce is 100 percent keen to move on positively from this. My thoughts are that it should never have been a code of conduct issue, it should have been a discussion between adults at the time it allegedly happened."

Councillor Jeremy McPhail said it took a lot of guts to apologise.

"I think we've just got to move on," he said.

Cupit and councillor Nicky Coats both said they would like council staff to find out how much had been spent on Anderson Lloyd investigations.

Bruce said she would like to see changes to the council's complaints process for future incidents.

"While I accept the code of conduct complaints have an important place, I struggle to see how the time, cost and public attention devoted to this matter are proportionate to the findings that it was neither significant nor serious," she said.

"I'd like to suggest that we look to become early adopters of the new LGNZ (Local Government New Zealand) standardised Code of Conduct that is set to come into play in a few months, so that in the future we have the processes in place so that minor issues like this can be dealt with in-house before escalation."

Bruce said one of the other code of conduct investigations stemmed from a separate complaint regarding her communications with staff.

That complaint was investigated and dismissed, with the investigator finding her communications were polite and professional, she said.