Archive for the 'Article' Category

Wharewaka, wharerugby, whareparty

Wellington.Scoop
Wellington’s new $11million wharewaka on Taranaki Wharf was supposed to be “a permanent expression of Maori art and culture.” But for six weeks next year it’s to be downgraded to become a place for parties and the sale of souvenirs.

“More than 1200 partygoers will be able to pack into the wharewaka,” reports the Dominion Post on the city council’s decision this week to make this new building the centre of a Rugby Village for the Rugby World Cup. Read more »

$9m disappears, so Adelaide Road won’t become a grand boulevard after all

Wellington.Scoop
Some of the Wellington City Council’s grand plans for Adelaide Road in Newtown came tumbling down this week.

The council has been consulting since 2007 about the idea of making Adelaide Road a grander avenue. There’ve been community meetings and a design workshop, followed by a Framework with a long-term vision which included “getting funding for key actions”.

But the council hasn’t succeeded with the “getting funding” bit. Read more »

Mayor Prendergast to stand for 4th term; poll shows only minority support

Wellington.Scoop
Reporting that Kerry Prendergast has decided to stand again for the mayoralty in the October elections, the DomPost today decided to poll its online readers about her popularity.

Would you vote for Kerry Prendergast for a fourth term as Wellington mayor, asks the online poll. The unscientific results are surprising, with only a quarter of the participants supporting the mayor:

By 10.30pm, 705 people had voted. Only 176 of them – just 25 per cent – said they would vote for the mayor. The largest group, representing 57 per cent of respondents, were the 312 who said they wouldn’t vote for her together with 93 who said they had previously voted for her “but it’s time for a change.” Read more »

Why the secrecy for this council meeting?

Wellington.Scoop
The Wellington City Council is having a secret meeting this morning. Here’s the agenda for the meeting, which was announced only three days ago:
Apologies, Public Participation, Announcements by the Mayor, Petitions, Conflict of Interest Declarations, Questions.
And then:
The following item is scheduled to be taken after the exclusion of the public.
Public Excluded General Business
Report 1.
Proposed Acquisition of Bus Operation Site

That’s all that we’re allowed to know about the secret meeting. The resolution to exclude the public, which quotes the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, will no doubt be passed, allowing councilors to debate the acquisition – perhaps even make a decision to buy some land somewhere – without pesky ratepayers sitting and listening.

But secrecy is hard to protect these days. And secrecy leads to rumours. And rumours are not necessarily correct. Read more »

Why the secrecy when city council staff approved a 27-acre car yard?

by Bruce Patterson
Although the proposal for a 27 acre (11.2 hectare) car storage and distribution facility for 2,500 vehicles in Grenada Village has been rejected by the Greater Wellington Regional Council on environmental grounds, the granting of a Land Use Consent by Wellington City Council needs to come under public scrutiny.

We are currently taking legal advice on challenging the City Council’s decision through a judicial review. Read more »

Tough times for the city council – so let’s have a party

Wellington.Scoop
by Lindsay Shelton
On the same day that it told us “these are … tough times and we all have to make savings,” I discovered that the Wellington City Council is being asked to spend $350,000 on an “iconic Rugby World Cup Sculpture”. Read more »

The silence of our councilors

Wellington.Scoop
by Lindsay Shelton
During the current debate about some of the big issues affecting Wellington, one set of voices has been strangely absent: Wellington’s elected city councilors have been almost completely silent. Read more »

The harbour isn’t enough?

Wellington.Scoop
by Lindsay Shelton
I knew there was a reason for thinking that Wellington’s gateway sculpture idea sounded grandiose. I was reminded of that reason when a report this week said that the people of Bagdhad are pulling down huge monuments built by Saddam Hussein, though the Arch of Victory has been saved from demolition because some people think it has cultural or historical significance. Read more »

Pollution concerns come from fishers, not from ‘loony tree huggers’


An abandoned, overflowing sediment trap near Porirua

Wellington.Scoop
By Jim Mikoz
It’s long overdue for the Greater Wellington Regional Council to take ownership of sediment management issues and the impacts of mud on marine ecosystems. Therefore we welcome the decision to refuse a resource consent for a 27-acre car yard in Grenada Village, because of its negative environmental effects on Porirua Harbour and the Porirua Stream. Read more »

The ‘loony tree huggers’ of Grenada, and their concerns about a 27 acre car yard


The valley which developers wanted to fill in, to create a 27-acre car yard.

Wellington.Scoop
Residents of Grenada Village and Grenada North would have been surprised yesterday to find themselves described as “loony tree-huggers.”

Their surprise would have been greater when they learnt that this description was given to them by a property consultant linked to a developer who’s spent $1.4million on earthworks for an 27-acre car storage yard which was being planned for their quiet rural suburb. Read more »

Situation vacant at Tranz Metro: they want someone to improve their services

Wellington.Scoop
The subject for today (when there’ve been more breakdowns) is how Tranz Metro is planning to improve the unhappy experiences of commuters who travel on its Wellington services. Read more »

The local people know that the memorial park can’t have a road cutting it in two

Wellington.Scoop
The people of Mt Cook know what needs to be done to make the long-postponed Buckle Street Memorial Park a success. The best solution, they say, is to trench and cover Buckle Street, so that the park can connect with the National War Memorial. Read more »

The council encourages whisky-drinking while it says it wants to ban liquor

Wellington.Scoop
by Lindsay Shelton
The Wellington City Council seems to be in denial. Having created the happy, over-the-top mayhem that is Courtenay Place every weekend, it’s now trying to calm things down with a ban on liquor in any public place. It already has a liquor ban in the central city, as is evidenced by its over-sized signs on lampposts. But now it wants to extend the ban into the suburbs as well.

The move seems to have begun with concern in Newtown about a small group of hard-core drinkers who were causing a nuisance on a few street corners. But somehow the Newtown worries have ballooned into a move which the Council for Civil Liberties understandably says would be “out of proportion to the public drinking problem. . . complete overkill.”

The council’s plan for a city-wide liquor ban seems at cross purposes with the programme of activities which it enthusiastically supports. For example, this Saturday’s Homegrown music festival has sold its naming rights to a brand of bourbon whisky. The council – one of the sponsors of the event – should surely ban such branding if it goes ahead with a liquor ban. Or will it decide that it’s okay to promote whisky drinking for teenagers in parks which are owned by the city? Read more »

Music School debate: why Erskine College could be a world-class music complex

Opinion by Robin Maconie
In New Zealand’s Centenary Year 1940, National Radio Founder Director James Shelley envisioned an integrated national music service to include a permanent symphony orchestra and Conservatorium of Music housed side by side in Wellington.

Seventy years later, Shelley’s original plan is still lying on the table, while the NZSO and two New Zealand university schools of music are embroiled in controversial real estate negotiations to relocate to new buildings on small parcels of open space in their respective city centres. Read more »

Why we can’t be smug about the leaky buildings on Auckland’s waterfront

Wellington.Scoop
by Lindsay Shelton
I felt unreasonably smug at the weekend when I learnt that the Hilton Hotel on Princes Wharf in Auckland has had to close some of its best rooms because there are leaks in the walls.

Would this have also been the fate of a Hilton Hotel in Wellington, had it been allowed to build on the outer-Tee of Queens Wharf? Read more »

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