from the stuff website:

“An almost 10 per cent rates hike and $550,000 of funding for the Capital Connection commuter train has been written into Greater Wellington Regional Council’s long-term budget.

“Councillors voted on Tuesday to approve the final wording of its 2015-25 long-term plan, which includes an annual rates increase of 9.8 per cent – or about $38 for the average home – for the 2015-16 financial year.

“Upper Hutt representative Paul Swain was the only councillor who voted against the final wording of the budget, because he felt the rates increase was too much.

“The long-term plan was finalised after 876 public submissions were received and many more people attended open days across the Wellington region during March and April.

“The rates increase of $10 million is made up of $1.1 million to keep existing services running, $4.8 million to fund the council’s current capital investment programme and $4.1 million for new activity.

“The only significant change to the long-term plan was the inclusion of $550,000 over five years to keep the Capital Connection rail service between Wellington and Palmerston North alive.

“KiwiRail plans to scrap the commercially run service at the end of June. But Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Council want to reclassify it as a Wellington commuter train, which would make it eligible for a taxpayer subsidy.

“Both regional councils have committed the same amount of funding, but it is dependent on the NZ Transport Agency also agreeing to the arrangement.”

Read the rest

This one with murals on both sides was seen in Mahina Bay just north of Days Bay.  See earlier posts for more creativity.

You may think the KCDC doesn’t care about what you think of it, but each June it pays a research company to find out residents’ opinions about its performance on a variety of topics, and presumably that will happen again this month.

The two pictures above are from last year’s Resident Satisfaction Survey; the full document is downloadable here (pdf file).  We assume the n figure of 83 means the number of people who were asked in Waikanae (they didn’t ask us).

As can be surmised from the participations in the two by-elections this year, only 41% of people apparently care about the Council and only 33% about the Community Board  — and you can’t help wondering how many of those who did vote regarded it as a personal popularity poll.

Nevertheless, for those of us who do care about how much the Council takes from us each year and what the bureaucrats do with the money, it is interesting reading.

One activist’s opinion!

A website for an official body located in Paraparaumu Beach especially for those experiencing family problems, which could lead to security problems for those in the general community — www.ask.kiwi

A suggestion has been made to us — and we think it’s a good one — that a body like Keep Waikanae Beautiful should award a prize each year to the house with the nicest public street frontage, excluding consideration of the house itself.

The prize could be a certificate and a voucher from a local garden centre.

In our case it would be hard to qualify as our public street frontage is only about 2 metres wide — half of our shared drive with our closest neighbour.  Nevertheless we have done our bit with a stone mailbox and shrubs along the verge.

This development has been suspected for a while and yesterday Waikanae Ward Councilor Michael Scott confirmed it on the Destination Waikanae website.

“The sale has been the subject of very tight confidentiality. If that had not been the case then a speculator would have stepped in (there were other interested parties) and made the price unaffordable. For years since the park n ride was established there has been car park pressure. With the partnership of GWRC and NZTA together with the involvement of KCDC staff, along with a couple of elected members, a further 250 car parks will be created taking the pressure off the shopper car parking. This is likely to have a fast track over the next couple of month.

“There are abilities now to landscape the southern entrenched [entrance] to Waikanae. A new wine bar and hospitality options will be available in Waikanae with associated jobs and opportunities . There just needs to be a pause for some thought and creativity rather than knee jerk pessimism.”

Who were the other interested parties, we might well wonder?  No-one with any nous thinks that this area is going to be Retail Central after the Expressway opens, instead this will move to the west end of Te Moana Road (see earlier).

So, another giant parking lot. The only retailers likely to benefit are those along the west side of SH1 between the fish & chip shop and the travel agency where pedestrians cross to the station side.

It won’t take much pressure off the car parking around Mahara Place either, as there is a 4-hour time limit in those parks and it is enforced.

At least there is a nice big heritage tree in this area, but we can’t see how it’s going to be possible to landscape this area much.

After seeing our earlier post, another Awanui Drive resident told us that she had a similar experience — in this case a neighborhood dog came onto her property and mauled her cat.  In this incident the cat survived, but a $1,000 vet bill was involved.

In its webpage on dogs, the KCDC makes clear that owners are expected to “keep their dogs under control or risk fines of up to $3,000”

In its full policy on dog control downloadable here (pdf file), the KCDC states that under the Dog Control Act its duties are:-

(a) to make better provision for the care and control of dogs –

i. by requiring the registration of dogs; and

ii. by making special provision in relation to dangerous or menacing dogs; and

iii. by imposing on the owners of dogs, obligations designed to ensure that dogs do not -cause a nuisance to any person nor injure, endanger, or cause distress to any person; and

iv. by imposing on owners of dogs obligations designed to ensure that dogs do not injure, endanger, or cause distress to any other dog, stock, poultry, domestic animal, or protected wildlife; and

(b) to make provision in relation to damage caused by dogs. Council has the requirement to manage most of the provisions in the Act.

In regard to leashes, the policy states:

1. (a) Dogs on public roads, which include footpaths and private ways, are to be under leash control by a person capable of controlling the dog. Leashes should not be excessively long (i.e. [they should be] less than 2 metres) and should be properly attached to a correctly fitting collar or harness (section 20(1)(b) and (c) of the Act).

(b) Dogs on public places, unless categorised as a no-dog or dog off-leash zone should be kept on-leash at all times (section 20(1)(c) of the Act).

The full policy document gives locations of restriction zones as well as maps.

One thing which the policy doesn’t do is require owners to clean up droppings from their dogs in public places and this needs to be addressed.

We do not want to be seen as being hard on people’s pet pooches, but owners have to perform their legal and moral duties.

It is now official — the super-city has been dropped; celebration time!

It seems about 90% of submissions to the Local Government Commission on the issue were negative, only about 10% were in favour of it.  Some suggested modifications, but our stance — and a major motivation for standing in both Waikanae by-elections this year — is to keep the status quo.

Update

Following this decision, the Greater Wellington Regional Council voted 9 to 3 to dump Fran Wilde as the chairperson.  She had strongly supported amalgamation.

At least that’s how they should be regarded — the NZ practice of considering the seasons changing on the 1st of March, June, September and December isn’t how they are marked in Europe, rather the equinoxes and solstices are so marked.

Here is a picture of our favourite corner of our garden in Waikanae, the lancewood tree on the left and the kowhai on the right form a sort of arch for our garden seat area, just visible. The lancewood used to look even better, but a storm on 17 April last year tore off a branch containing about a third of the canopy 🙁

A few locals in the last few days took up our offer of self-sown kowhai and puriri seedlings in this area which we didn’t want.  In the past we have sold them on TradeMe, but thought we would demonstrate community good neighbourliness this time.

It also happens to be Arbor Day in New Zealand — so why not mark it by planting a native tree in your front or back yard?

We have several puriri and kowhai seedlings in our garden that we are happy to provide free to locals in the Waikanae area.  Let us do something to counter the miles of tarmac that are replacing fields and trees with the Expressway, not to mention the new housing subdivisions, about which we have had plenty to say.

The above screenshot is from the Department of Conservation website