A Hobart City Council planning meeting has been shut down for the second time in recent weeks due to a lack of councillors.
Chair Mike Dutta was left waiting for 30 minutes before having to cancel the meeting on Wednesday night, saying it was “extremely disappointing”.
“I want to welcome and also apologise for the delay in the meeting. We don’t have a quorum unfortunately that why we had to wait for half an hour before we could start,” he said.
“There’s only five of us here, [so] we’ll have to unfortunately once again close this meeting, which is very extremely disappointing not only for me as the chair but for the members of the community.”
Of the 12 councillors listed on the meeting agenda, only Gemma Kitsos, Ben Lohberger, Bill Harvey, Zelinda Sherlock and Dutta were present.
Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, Ryan Posselt and Will Coats issued apologies, while Marti Zucco, Louise Elliot, John Kelly and Louise Bloomfield did not show up.
A quorum for a council committee meeting means that more than half of the councillors who are part of the committee need to be present for the meeting to be valid.
A planning meeting was most recently held on June 5 after last being abandoned on May 22 for another failure to get a quorum.
