Patrick’s post last week on the Western Springs Pohutukawas has easily been our most read post of the year so far and highlighted what seems to be a deeply held sense of outrage over Auckland Transport’s plans to remove these trees. Many people, including ourselves to an extent, who normally wouldn’t feel so passionate about the loss of six trees (after all there are a whole heap more of them a bit further along Great North Road) are up in arms over the plans. While Auckland Transport continue to argue the removal is necessary, it feels like only a matter of time before they change their mind and try to find a compromise.
So what gives here? What is it about this particular issue that has struck a nerve so deeply?Part of the issue of course, is that the trees are pretty amazing:
Get a load of this 80 yr old mammoth @Pohutukawa6 In your backyard council would decline but not @AklTransport pic.twitter.com/O4EBeBvgxR
— Chris Darby (@DarbyatCouncil) January 22, 2015
However, I think as much of the angst has come about because of the way in which Auckland Transport has gone about this project and some of the broader issues with the project itself.
Looking first at process, a few months back Public Address carried a post by Jolisa Gracewood that outlined the absolute clusterf*ck that had come about through the consenting process – with most people who made submissions being very unfairly denied the right to have those submissions taken into account. Here’s an extract:
It has come to the commissioners attention from the hearing today that your submission has been lodged on the wrong process (there were two for this hearing – A resource consent and a notice of requirement) and the Commissioners will be unable to take it into account when making their decisions. This is addressed in the Council’s report on the applications which was included in the agenda circulated before the hearing.
The Commissioners think it’s fair to advise each of the submitters concerned in advance of their attendance so they can elect whether to attend or not given that they will have to travel into the city and pay for parking etc. They are happy to hear from you, however it is not legally possible to switch a submission from one of the processes to the other.
The commissioners will be happy to explain this more tomorrow if it doesn’t quite make sense as this effects a number of submitters, they just feel it’s fair to let you know before showing up.
This didn’t make sense to me, so I asked for more information. I was told that the mistake had been mentioned in the Hearing Agenda. Sure enough, there on page 921:
It is also noted that a number of submissions have been incorrectly lodged against resource consent application ref R/VCC/2013/4724/1 (which is the s127 variation to conditions of the regional consent for Stormwater Management – Quality, pursuant to Rule H.4.14.3.1 of the PAUP). All submissions should have been lodged referencing the Notice of Requirement for Alternation to Designation Plan Modification PA371. In any case, all submissions have been reviewed and reported on the project jointly.
In other words, a number of submissions had mistakenly used the reference number for a stormwater issue (specifically, how to handle the stormwater issues from the extra 762m2 of impervious area created if the trees are removed), instead of the reference number notifying intent to remove the trees. Moreover, “Resource Consent” was the wrong phrase, “Notice of Requirement” the correct one.
The post outlines how it was completely clear which application submitters were intending to comment on, yet nothing was changed to fix the matter and therefore most people were not able to have their opinions heard on the application. Really really dodgy.
The second issue is that the project itself is a dog. Even if there weren’t any trees being removed, what Auckland Transport is proposing to do here it terrible, dangerous and belongs a 1960s traffic engineering handbook, rather than a redesigned intersection of the 21st century. If you are walking between the St Lukes overbridge and MOTAT/Western Springs Park, you will potentially have not one, not two but three “beg buttons” you’ll have to push to get across:
Obviously the intersection needs another pedestrian leg across Great North Road on its city side. Why haven’t we got that in the design? Who knows – more lazy engineering from Auckland Transport seems like the only plausible answer here.
Lazy engineering comes to mind when Auckland Transport start to describe why the trees can’t be saved. Back to the recent press release:
Auckland Transport would not have supported the application to remove six Pohutukawa trees from Great North Road, if there had been any other viable option, but all engineering experts agreed that there was not.
No other viable option? As Patrick pointed out in his post, what about sending the walking/cycling path behind the trees? Speaking of cycling, AT still continue the absolute lie that this is all about providing cycle lanes to the St Lukes Rd bridge. Perhaps I’m going blind because I can’t see a single cycle lane being added on Gt North Rd – because in my book a shared path doesn’t count. In fact why go to all the bother to removal the trees and not install best practice separated cycle lanes.
Carrying on, what about only having two citybound lanes on Great North Road instead of three (after all, only two lanes will ever feed into it at one time)? What about having only a single left-turn lane from Great North Road into St Lukes Road? Of course there would be trade-offs with all these options, but none of this analysis has been made public – aside from a few seconds in the PM peak hour at some point in the future that apparently will be saved by having a squillion lanes through here. AT should be confident enough in their analysis that they should release it all to the public tomorrow so we can see exactly what they’ve considered and why it’s been ruled out.
So I actually think it’s these wider issues which sit behind much of the passion over this issue. And frustration with Auckland Transport’s absolute shoddiness. Running a shoddy consenting process, undertaking a shoddy assessment of alternatives, proposing a shoddy outcome for pedestrians in a very busy pedestrian area.
It’s just shoddy, and that pisses us off.
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Like all things about this project, it makes it pretty much worse for all non-motorized modes. Pedestrians should be a high priority given its proximity to Western Springs, MOTAT, WS Speedway etc and given how many families with children will be walking around. Should be at most 2 sections of road to cross (though preferably have diagonal cross like some of queen st if possible) and the “beg buttons” should give high priority to pedestrians as opposed to cars, sick of having to stand around like an idiot, especially in the rain.
Well said Peter.
Further, the pedestrian crossing that is part of the NW cycleway on the off ramp slip lane is a death in the making which 70 mill won’t fix. And they have the cheek to suggest this improves the area for cycling and walking. Very ordinary.
Is a very common tactic where what is obviously a road expansion project gets marketed as helping peds/cycling/pt which are only getting lipservice. The basin flyover was a classic example with the supposed “we cant improve PT without this motorway bridge” thrown in to the marketing.
It’s not lazy engineering; it’s poor framing of the scope and that can be traced back to poor policy decisions.
Thats a fair point. Perhaps the people actually doing the design on this are brilliant, innovative, engineers who have designed the best possible layout to meet their scope. In that case not only is the scope bullshit and those responsible are invompetent, but the engineers at the coal face are lazy and coeardly for not questioning it. They have designed something that will make Auckland a worse place… that is not what engineering is supposed to be about.
My research indicates that the design was undertaken by a company contracted by AT. They will have tendered for the work based on a technical specification drawn up by AT and are contractually obliged to meet the requirements placed on them by AT and (on the assumption that they were the lowest bidder) will have tight budgetary constraints and shedules.
Requirements for pedestrian priority and preservation of the trees can, and should have been, mandated by those preparing the specification. Rail at the engineers all you like, responsibility belongs at the top of the organisation (ie the ones getting the big buck salaries) not the the designers at the coal face.
Well put Matt.
Is it possible to do a local government official information act request on the background work they did on the alternatives and the modelling?
I think a lot of these monstrosities are the result of motorway on ramp signals. They move the congestion problems off the motorway and onto the local roads. They may save some time for long distance motorway commutes, but are they really worth all the arterial congestion they cause? Its almost like NZTA are handing the problem to AT to sort out.
Agree 100%.
The problem AT think they’re solving is caused 100% by the elephant in the room – on ramp signalling at St Lukes on ramp.
Take that away and the scope of the problem reduces so that a single left turn lane is more than enough..
Are you kidding me all those motorway lanes and still ramp metering. Yes that would be our current solution to things. Or actually turning on the PT tap for one lane each way , plus protected cycle also and cars go free flow? The circus music just gets louder and louder. And the solution just gets clearer and clearer.
I agree wholeheartedly. The on ramp signals cause more congestion and frustration. Takapuna, Penrose Greenlane, all have long queues of traffic when the lights are on. Our on ramps are too short for them. They may work in other countries but not here as far as I can see. We are quite capable of merging onto the motorway without them.
Yes these are the root cause of the problem here, but they are not used to make us merge better onto the motorway.
They are used to ration the motorway to those not already on it. In effect giving privilege to those from longer distances over those who want to use for shorter trips.
To me its a failed experiment as while it means once you’re on the motorway you can at least (in theory) move, I am not sure if the actual “throughput” achieved when door to door times is measured is actually better with ramp signals.
So the second slip lane is needed here to simply allow 7 more cars to stack on/near the overbridge at peak – an expensive way to deal with the issue for 7 more cars.
Better yet to make it so that those 7 cars (and the 7 people in them) aren’t there in the first place.
So are there going to be 7 lanes at least on GNR at that point, 3 city bound, I assume at least one right turn to St Lukes Rd, 2 left turn into St Lukes Rd and is it 1 or 2 Pt Chev bound? And then there is at least 2 right turn lanes for the m’way near the petrol station 100 metres or so toward the city therefore possibly making it 9 lanes at that point. Whatever the number GNR has become a motorway in its own right only restricted to 50 km/hr. And of course the dinosaur next to it, the actual motorway you add another 9 super sized motorway width lanes, 4 each way plus an exit lane for Western Springs, plus break down strips inside and outside the lanes, taking the total amount of real estate in this area (GNR & M’way) taken up by bitumen to 16 lanes minimum and who knows how many hectares. This is unbelievable, the self perpetuating road scenario and an all consuming black hole for money!
What is wrong with this picture???????
All this widening of St Lukes Rd overbridge reminds me of the huge and almost pointless spend up at Henderson. There is still the same amount of traffic light controlled intersections galore, the same ones that impede traffic flows now, not a single non confronting exit or entrance lane that is taken care of by the cloverleaf design. The whole project at this point seems to me to be an utter waste of money to only slightly improve traffic flows. Talk about minimum bang for our buck!
Cloverleaf interchanges are pretty bad from an accident point of view as you have as there’s only a short space of road for all the people entering from the onramp to merge into the general traffic flow while at the same time needing to deal with all the people trying to merge out of the main lanes to use the off ramp.
So according to the NZ Cycle trail design you need only 2m height to tree branches if it is sign posted in advance or at worst 2.4m height. Has anyone measured height to the branches and what size they are? from a distance clear of the carpark I guess I need to do that. I query the whole design. If we go true multi-modal on all arterials does car need more than one lane each way really. No one is looking at 2 x full network effects of protected cycle and bus (or tram in places) or ultimate mode shares. Projecting traffic demands when you are down 2 complete networks is fundamentally flawed and their traffic models mean absolutely nothing. I know for a fact that Murphys Rd in Flat Bush moved the whole centerline 6m to avoid a cluster of tree specimens same age by the historical school house, admitidly greenfields but don’t think same effort being applied here, or any effort really by the sounds of things. There they are doing a 3m wide shared pervious cobblestone path over sand to protect roots with minimal excavation. Just saying not impossible. So who are the experts then are they chartered engineers and investigated eveything at length and thought about ultimate mode share. No reason why not 20% cycle and bus 30% min based on CBD and probably 20% more car mode in rail when full networks up. That is the big picture not spring boarding from the past on a one mode wonder. The key is these projects allowing for that and.maximising bus and cycle which this one doesn’t. 4m protected 2 way cycle, and 2 full bus lanes, I thought would be minimum.
For the record a shared path is fully compliant behind the trees and no carparks lost. The chances of any traffic growth is zero if a full bus network of own lane on most arterials and a full protected cycle network is installed. In fact the chances of a high.mode share change is note likely if both networks are of a high, safe standard. The problem is no one has modelled that as not done before in NZ and we are projecting from a predominant car network. Even if we low balled 50% Copenhagen am mode share for people on bikes (50% of 41%)and 50% our current bus mode in Auckland CBD (50% of 31% i think) that is about 37% less traffic. So should these trees suffer because we haven’t even reprioritised our arterials with the current road width. Some areas side parking is a barrier, some places not, also median space could be utilized better for those 2 modes. And a reduction of over 30% would be congestion free motorway and no need for ramp metering. So what does that do to the extra slip lane?
It would be interesting to know what Auckland Council parks would think about placing a footpath behind the trees under the dripline and over the roots of them. I can hazard a guess and i would expect the only practical option would be to remove them.
Really? The current shared path is under the drip line. And if roots are really that sensitive either a boardwalk can be built or, easier and cheaper, just ride through the carpark… There is no reason to not use this space for people. At the meeting AT claimed MOTAT insist on only having carparking there, but MOTAT have publi ally denied this.
There is no reason why a sand base cobblestone footpath can’t be built under the drip line with minimal excavation. Any arborist will back me up on this. Of course need an arborist while excavating and trimming branches that is it. I counted 6 branches 60 to 160mm dia to trim back, and only one larger branch that by NZ Cycle Trail would need to be signposted. I marked the path out take a look, no carparks gone.
The problem is we aren’t fully trying to open.up both networks with the road space we do have at the.moment. Why not 3.8m width for protected cycle (even if into car space) and full bus lanes? Don’t we want to zero out congestion the smartest way? Plus also more transferring of people to the rail network , havn’t even taken that into account and ability to up resource buses. Projects like this are the problem not the cure at all. Imagine protected cycle on the Motat/zoo side and Copenhagen intersection treatments for those and at least another pedestrian crossing on city side. And then maybe looking to remove slip lane later for direct ped xing, or now if we wanted to hit this once and give a full people focus, not a car focus. All upward projections for car are pretty short sighted if we fully open up protected bike and bus lanes comprehensively. Great North Road is like a primary artery why block it to potentially highest mode share. Engineers have ethical obligations for sustainability and future generations. I think this proves actually not doing that, even without taking the historical, beautiful, and usually 100% protected trees into account. One Charteted Civil Engineer says take back to drawing board please.
If this was a project in the UK, those trees would be saved…
“If this was a project in the UK, those trees would be saved…”
Yes, pohutukawa trees surviving to 80 years old in the UK would be quite remarkable!
If this were a project in the UK, they would be halving the public space given over the motor vehicles in order to make it a nicer place for the majority of users, and would be increasing the number of trees, and removing some of the right hand turning possibilities for cars in order to make it flow better for the remaing road users.
e.g. Old St roundabout, a major intersection on the inner ring road – a main arterial of inner london. https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/old-street-roundabout
I think part of the outrage is the realisation that Aucklanders are powerless in the face of the AT monolith and a gutless Auckland Council. Where is the Mayor’s leadership? Where are Council representatives on AT? All we hear is the Mayor bleating that we should want to give even more money to AT to create disastrous projects like this with no meaningful consultation. Council Controlled Organisation …ha!
The mayor or any councillor is powerless under the way the Auckland Council is set up. They can make a lot of noise but they are pretty much spectators like the rest of us. Don’t believe it, then look no further than the Ports of Auckland dispute a few years back, all Len Brown could do was puff and huff, it wasn’t of his making and he was impotent in solving it as well. As far as Auckland Council being a democratic public governance model goes, it’s nothing more than a clever illusion.
My local councillor is on the board of AT. I’m not sure how powerless that makes him, but not a single public statement one way or another.
Except it’s not an illusion nor clever. More cheap magician. Aucklanders can see Council is not democratic.
AT’s use of cycling to sugar coat this project is irresponsible. Cycle Action totally rejects AT’s suggestion there are cycling improvements that justify the removal of the trees, and that there is no practical alternative.
Our blog website last week exposes this as cynical spin- http://caa.org.nz/general-news/trees-or-traffic/
It is essential this project is taken back to the drawing board.
Hear, hear!
Kubi is on to it. Everyone’s anger is not just about this appalling disastrous nonsensical project at Western Springs but because we can point to it as an emotional example of AT’s arrogant high and mighty we-are-right bullying behaviour that we have been seeing for years and we are all over it. I mean has anyone met anyone who doesn’t think the tree issue including the exclusion of some submitters is just outrageous?
With an election two years away, councillors and the Mayor are noticeable for their silence on the issue, some hiding under some pretence they can’t comment because it is before some court.
It is time we pushed for the bigger picture. AT has grown too big, too arrogant and a law until itself even from the council as shown on the TV news by the Mayor’s anger at the light rail project being announced on the same day as his long term plan.
AT has become a rogue organisation thanks to its separate board, CEO and hierarchy.
AT needs to be brought back under the council umbrella and once again become the council’s transport department. Thankfully there is more enlightened council transport policy since the old Auckland City Council’s transport department under John Banks which was all about highways. Bringing it back means it is under the Council CEO and within grasp of the Mayor so that it can more accurately reflect the overall council’s agenda and priority list. The CRL is the Mayor’s number one priority and there needs to be a stop to AT sideshows to distract from that goal.
The better councillors like Chris Darby and Penny Hulse must stand up and ask the government, which set up this over bloated structure, to allow transport to be directly under the council’s wing again.
Didn’t the mastermind behind this blog join the council’s transport section? Imagine if he had the power to be in charge. 🙂
Here is a report explaining import to get desired outcome. Note the word “remove” which makes “actual recorded” close to the “higher … adopted”
Nov 2008
Page 19 – Current daily volumes of 25,700 vehicles are accommodated within the single through lane at the rail crossing …. within the next 10 years, during which time the daily volumes at the railway crossing point may increase to approximately 30,000 vpd.
Page 26. – 2007 AADT was not consistent with the trend of previous years, and was removed for analysis.
Based on 2002 to 2006 traffic counts, the traffic growth rate at this site was estimated to be 1.7%.
The EEM specifies 2% as the current default traffic growth rate for the Waikato region. There is very little difference between actual recorded rate and default rate, therefore the higher 2% was adopted for updating survey counts.
6.2 Future Year Growth Rate – An annual growth rate of 3% was adopted for the future year traffic growth rate
http://www.waipadc.govt.nz/our-district/MajorProjects/HamiltonSouthernLinks-NoticesofRequirement/Documents/Supporting-Documentation/AEE%20Appendix%20O%20-%20Traffic%20Modelling%20Report%20-%20Appendix%20E1.4.pdf
I think in all cities if public transport, and cycling was a true focus with road space, bus resources, cycle protection added there is no way in hell, car would grow at 3% it isn’t even now being in an enclosed fully fake bubble with those 2 networks blocked out. This is all going to pop with us left with too much asphalt and wandering how did they justify that to start off with?
I saw the Copenhagen mode share splits to work and educational facilities 36% cycle in 2010 now 41%, 28% PT,29% car,7% walking. Design all corridors for that in particular this one in Western Springs. Why not a good place to start I thought MOTAT about transport excellence.
I’ve just completed a wonderful four days walking the Kepler Track. The night we stayed in the DOC hut on the shores of Lake Manapouri the Ranger provided a succinct history of the Save Manapouri campaign of the 1960’s and early 70’s where people power hobbled the grandiose & grotesque schemes of the hydro engineers and their paymasters. Maybe it’s time roading engineers and those who write their scopes of work were similarly put back in their box. These six pohutukawa could be the Manapouri of this decade and if it takes a little affirmative action I’m up for it.
Why does a shared path for cycling and walking not count!!?? They are great and provide a great place for kids to ride
They are not ‘great’ in the urban environment or anywhere you want to see numbers of people on bikes increase. Shared paths do little to get the mass of ‘Interested’ potential bike riders out riding.
If we had 4m width , 3m for 2 way cycling and planted concrete barriers within the 1m clearance to bus or car it would be safe for school kids with some road sense to ride as well and no pedestrians to worry about. For kids younger than that suggest a park setting or off road cycleway to learn more about basics before on road and recognising cycle signals etc it would need good training/ parent supervision initially no matter how safe the corridor itself was as you will have intersections to cross etc. But safer than now absolutely and a great option once they are ready to go.
Intersections should pose no issues. The Dutch know how to do this. Copy, flip, paste.
CAA explain it well:
“the “cycleway” proposed here is just some 110m of shared path extension, on one corner of the intersection. Even ignoring that shared paths aren’t ideal for an urban area, there are currently no cycleways east of this short extra stub – i.e. people have to ride through the massive intersection / motorway interchange (opposite the speedway), and past wide petrol station driveways to even get to it in the first place. Only confident road cyclists – who tend to ignore shared paths anyway- are likely to do so. The path thus provides little benefit to increasing cycling or making it safer. Auckland Transport are also not providing cycleways on the northern side of the intersection, despite rebuilding the whole layout.”
http://caa.org.nz/general-news/trees-or-traffic/
AT are not good at making cycle ways at all. They rarely build one, and when they do do that, it’s often pretty useless because they’ve compromised on the most important thing: the route. See the Beach Rd cycleway which follows Beach Rd for 500m before embarking on a sinuous (planned) route towards the viaduct. A path most commuters wouldn’t take, directing bikes to places that are already bike friendly and safe instead of providing a safe biking path ALONG Beach Rd, a bike-unfriendly route if there is one.
The Dominion Rd parallel cycle routes are another great example of how AT failed to provide an essential safe bike route along a dangerous commuter route, choosing instead to redirect bikes to a very convoluted route which was already safe for cyclists, but which no sane commuting cyclist would take.
Ie: they need outside help for their cycleway design, doesn’t look like they can do it well themselves.
With their poor track record, pretending that they have to cut 6 large trees to put in a cycle way is laughable.
They’re planning to extend the Beach Rd cycleway through to the start of the Britomart precinct this year, I’m not sure if that will be affected by the proposed budget cuts or not…
Heads up for the upcoming resource consent process for a highway through the untouched Hollyford Valley in Mt Aspiring/Fiordland National Parks, proposed using (outraged) Westland ratepayers’ money – as a private toll road paid for by a private overseas investor. If you think losing six trees is bad, what about a wedge cut through one of New Zealand’s Great Walks, felling countless ancient beeches and rimus and ruining it forever? Some support to oppose this outrage would be welcome from Aucklanders, we have been shut out of all the processes so far here in Westland. “Your submission is invalid…” etc etc. Help!
Having looked down on that valley from Key Summit I totally agree it would be an outrage and will make a submission to the Minister.
Thank you…and please spread the word. The Hollyford Road comes up for RMA submissions next month. Watch for dirty tricks as there are two different councils here, West Coast Regional Council, and the Westland District Council. As with your Auckland pohutukawa submissions being disallowed, we are tricked by one council into submitting to the other, then excluded: “your submission is to the wrong body”. Worse, we get told we have no right to submit on new mines, roads, etc unless our property is next door to the site. Another dirty trick is for the proposals to claim they will have a “less than minor” effect which also automatically excludes any comment by the dreaded “greenies”. Yet another dangerous word is “vexatious”. The Environment Court fined a local guy $20,000 for trying to reduce aerial poison spray next to his property. He was constantly knocked back for having the wrong forms, etc, then slapped with a prohibitive fine for being “vexatious”.
I noted this comment from LINZ (and re-iterated by the Conservation Minister last year) about the legal status of the 38km of paper road being used to plan this from the Press last year:
(http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/west-coast/9872211/230m-Haast-Hollyford-road-mooted)
“LINZ policy and regulatory general manager, Craig Armitage, said that the proposed route’s southern and northern ends were already legal roads and appeared in the “cadastre”, the system that recorded location and the extent of legal parcels of land, including roads.
However, although a connecting ‘road’ is shown on some historical maps and documents, it is unclear whether it is in fact a legal ‘paper’ road,” he said.
LINZ believed the matter should be decided in court.”
So, has the legal status of the “connecting road” been confirmed (in court) as having been illegally removed in 1976?
Because unless this “paper road removed illegally” is proven by the applicant – the roads won’t link – as the paper road that did that – no longer exists and hasn’t since 1976 when it was removed.
And I suggest this is the angle that you should be using to oppose it in your local and regional council’s submission process initially – without legal status as a paper road this application can’t be considered as proposed and so will never happen.
Funny you should mention that! The WDC had a sneaky little meeting at very short notice on Christmas Eve and passed a resolution in 5 minutes unopposed to “Take Legal Ownership” of the old paper road. I am sure they are aware this is the weak point and they are using ratepayers money to forge full steam ahead. Advised by expensive lawyers. And goaded by a deep pockets foreign investor who wants a tourist road to Fiordland. see https://www.westlanddc.govt.nz/extraordinary-council-meeting-24-december-2014. And the contractor wanting to build this road and pocket the $250 million? The council-owned Westroads. Conflict of intetrest? No problem! They will award themselves a $1 million success fee if they grant themselves permission! See http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/264303/mystery-haast-hollyford-road-contractor-revealed
So council passed a resolution saying its always been a legal road.
Seems to me Council are trying to make it someone else’s problem by making the paper road retrospectively valid to try and forestall the need to defend the roads validity in court.
But thats not the argument to be decided – the argument they need to have is that this paper road was removed “illegally” in 1976 when it was dropped from the “cadastral database”.
A paper road can be dropped pretty much with a pen stroke. Which is what appears to have happened here [and probably for good reason].
Getting it back requires more than a council resolution “saying so”.
Secondly, I think you should consider challenging the validity of the Extraordinary General Meeting/resolutions/council vote on this matter.
As part of the rules around these things is Council have to be able to show why an EGM was necessary to be held at the time/urgency it was to pass the resolutions passed, without the required 14 days public notice period with agenda that normal Council meetings require.
Might pay to check with the LGMA (Local Governments Meeting Acts) as to whether any resolutions passed by this EGM are in fact legal and also the WDC’s own standing orders as to conduct of the EGM, as the minutes should make it clear why they did what they did by calling a EGM.
Just because someone in Council thinks something is urgent – doesn’t make it so. A normal public advance notification process has to be followed unless there are specific reasons why not.
e.g. An emergency situation arose that required full Council vote on a matter to be able to proceed – this doesn’t seem like one of those, especially given that the letters attached to the minutes were some 5-6 months old at the time so can’t be considered “new information” or such.
Should the EGM was held without sufficient public notice and/or without sufficient public reason for doing so, then the resolutions are not binding/valid as the meeting itself had no legal standing.
Council will then need to add these item(s) to the agenda of a subsequent public meeting and vote as per normal resolutions or call another (legal) EGM and vote there.
I am sure the Conservation Minister will end up “calling in” this proposal if WDC carries on further like this so even if they think they are winning they may not get what they want.
Your input is much appreciated, the Hollyford Valley needs your help! We are all just humble ratepayers and work every hour of the day and few of us have the time or energy to challenge the legal status of our crafty, unhelpful council. The one person voted in to represent our interests in this and other dodgy financial matters was forced to resign, after only a few months, by the hostility of the mayor and others, leaving room for another unelected shoe-in pro- “development” member. Hard times, dastardly methods, which will sound familiar to Aucklanders frustrated with the lack of healthy opposition to transport planning gone mad.
Suppose we can’t have trees getting in the way of the endless love every m’way spreads around: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11391754
Not hard to find medical evidence of what those emissions lead to – autism as a result of pregnant women living near motorways is just one outcome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114825/
Hi all. This whole fiasco astounds me. Firstly – how can a bunch of unelected bureaucrats make these decisions? As others have said, where is Len Brown, and Penny Hulse in all of this? Secondly, why do we continue to build stuff that no one wants and agrees with, and collectively we all know is leading us in the wrong direction? We have these glorious visions for a ‘world class’. ‘liveable’ city, and then we build shit. So depressing.
In terms of this project, and as someone mentioned in a post the other day, surely they could build one slip lane and see how it functions. They only thing that is certain is that the traffic modelling will be wrong.
Well done you guys for your continued vigilance.
“How can a bunch of unelected bureaucrats make these decisions?”
Because Rodney Hide and John Key gave them the power to do so.
And without MMP disallowing constituency candidates to be on a party list, bad politicians can never be voted out, they stay in on the list (unelected) even when their constituents reject them outright at the polls. This should have been reformed under the MMP review. Otherwise the concentration of bad, unelected officials increases every time!
Elected politicians are not ‘officials’. Those are employees, not representatives.
Under MMP, members on the list are meant to represent communities of interest other than those elected via place-based electorates. Maori or women or rural folk, for instance. That does not make them any less ‘elected’.
If you do not like one party’s list, vote for another. Not that hard.
https://www.niwa.co.nz/sites/niwa.co.nz/files/import/attachments/co1x0405_p05.pdf
The last thing you want to do near a motorway is chop trees down which are filtering vehicle emissions.
Interesting to see a story on how bad it is for health living next to motorways , because of air pollution!!!! These beautiful trees need to be saved!!! When will we wake up from this nightmare!!!????? <3
Starting to hear that our voices are being heard on this issue, I now expect a way for the trees to be kept to be found. If I am right about this congratulations to those you stood up is in order but also to AT and other institutions for listening and making the effort to be more creative in their work to improve this massive project.
Here’s hoping.