Hours before it took effect on Monday, councillors met to consider whether to adopt the policy with amended wording around what decisions the council could not make during election periods.

This included preventing the council from making "prohibited" rather than "inappropriate" decisions.

The proposed updated policy also suggested replacing the clause that suggest council not make any major policy decisions that future councils can't reverse if needed.

During debate, Councillor John Robinson expressed concerns that the updated policy did not define what "prohibited" meant in this case.

The council adopted its election period policy, as required on the new Local Government Act (2020), at its August meeting.

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Cr Robinson asked whether council would have to bring the revised policy back to the community for consultation before adopting it.

Chief executive Sunil Bhalla said the changes mainly related to updating references to the new act, and did not impact on "the intent of the policy". Cr Robinson said this did not answer his question.

"If it is substantially not changed, why don't we leave the wording the same?" he said.

Cr Robinson moved a motion to include the definition of the phrase "prohibited decision". He suggested a decision made by a current council "that binds the incoming council and limits its freedom of action" be this definition.

"It is our duty to do what we can to support the incoming council, not hinder the incoming council," he said. "This (amendment) is one way of being able to hold our head up high and say to the community we have done what we have consulted them on."

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The motion to adopt the policy carried, with Councillor Pam Clarke voting against it.

"I'm not so much against the actual changing, it's just frustrating when we go through so much consultation, take it out to the community, change things to accommodate some of the comments and then it's changed again," she said.

"The document should be finite and concluded when it comes to a council meeting. It's just the principle of the issue and I will say it's bad governance."

The revised policy prohibits the council from making decisions it considers could be reasonably deferred until the next council is in place; or that should not be made during an election period.

The 32-day election period begins at 12.01am on Tuesday, September 22, and lasts until 6pm on Saturday, October 24.

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