Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark denies request from councillors to ...

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark has declared he will not be resigning despite fellow councillors calling to for him to do so at an extraordinary council meeting today.

The meeting was called following a code of conduct complaint against Clark due to his behaviour at a United Fire Brigades’ Association (UFBA) prizegiving dinner where he was a guest of honour.

UFBA chief executive William Butzbach said Clark mocked, disrespected, degraded and offended its members, staff and other guests during the event.

A code of conduct complaint was lodged by council chief executive Michael Day on behalf of the UFBA.

Clark has since apologised in a letter to Butzbach, saying he was suffering from “brain fade” following open heart surgery. He also maintained some of his behaviour was not as described.

“For me, I felt terrible after the dinner and within a couple of days, and well before the complaint was lodged, I sought some specialist advice, as I do not normally present this way at public meetings,” his letter said.

In April, Cr’s Ian Pottinger and Ria Bond filed a code of conduct complaint against Clark after his appearance on Guy Williams’ satirical news show New Zealand Today where he defended previous use of the N-word at an Art Foundation event, and repeated it while on the show.

In his opening statement, Clark said he did not accept that the public complaint should be dealt with in this way, and that he would take an opportunity at later date to set a review for this process. He said it set a dangerous precedent for elected members.

Following his opening statement, Clark left the meeting.