These close at midday tomorrow, so don’t leave it any longer!  At present there are four nominations for the Waikanae Ward council seat and 7 for the four seats on the Waikanae Community Board.

Other seats in the district have fewer contestants

If you think you can do a better job than the ‘wet blankets and halfwits’ (as described by a ratepayer in Paraparaumu today) on the council now, then offer yourself!

This themed cafe/restaurant, which uses two former English Electric multiple unit cars used on the Johnsonville line of the Wellington network, opened yesterday so we went along this morning to get some updated pics since our visit last year (see earlier).  It seems the development process including council permits took about 18 months, and there have been several finishing touches made since our last visit.

As well as evening functions, it is open for lunch Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 12 to 3 pm; bookings are recommended.  website

the kitchen car — with hostess Awhina and chef Alan

the driving cab has been left largely intact; but it’s not going anywhere

inside the dining car

This extract from the KCDC Candidates Handbook shows that while the Waikanae Community Board members wanted a 30% pay rise, the Remuneration Authority gave them 11% — the same as everyone else.

The pay for a councilor is about right in our view considering the hours involved — about a half full-time job for someone who takes the job seriously, but if the WCB members simply see their role as showing up to the hall 8 times a year to decide on applications for grants and rubber-stamp decisions made by bureaucrats, then what they get is overgenerous.

Anyway the opportunity to replace the existing WCB members with better ones is coming shortly.

This is an extract from the KCDC’s Candidate Information Booklet for the October elections which covers the question of councilors’ financial interests within the area.  It makes clear that someone who either directly, or though a body corporate, is involved in contracts with the council of more than $25,000 (including GST) in a year is not able to serve as the mayor or as a councilor.

The Act referred to also makes clear in Section 6 that a councilor is “not to discuss or vote on a question in which he has pecuniary interest.”

The problem is that the Act does not specify any method by which other councilors are going to know that — shareholdings and properties can be held in the name of trusts or nominee companies.  Clearly there needs to be a compulsory register of councilors’ directly obvious or disguised pecuniary interests in properties and commercial entities within the council’s territory.

As seen from the hills above Makara off the west coast of Wellington.  The much smaller Mana Island is not much of an icon although it had a lighthouse placed on it in the 19th century.

from Barnstormers.co.nz :

“Early photographs of female motorcycle riders are scarce with the sport of riding motorcycles regarded as the domain of men. So it was a pleasant surprise to come across a photo postcard depicting what looks like a female rider dressed and ready posing in front of an early fixed speed Triumph. The scene is labelled as Motor Reliability Trials and dated 24 April 1909. According to newspaper reports from that period the trials were run by the New Zealand Motorcycle Club and started from their club’s rooms at 52 Willis St in Wellington. The route was 84 miles [135 km] to Waikanae and back. There were 28 competitors of whom one was a lady from Hastings. The lady rider experienced a mishap negotiating a water-course approaching Waikanae and retired.”

With the defoliation it looks like a winter scene.

A feature of Google maps is the Streetview which consists of millions of 360 degree images taken along most streets and roads in geographical sequence a few metres apart.  Most people are aware of this, but some may not have noticed that you can select the most recent view or – in Waikanae’s case – previous views from 2008 and 2013.

Above is an example of two views, from 2008 and 2014, that show a change in the vista at 60 Sylvan Avenue caused by the owner chopping down a large native puriri tree and placing a fence in front of the streetfront hedge.  The sense of doing either escapes us (crown thinning the tree would have been a much better thing to do, and why waste money on a fence when you have a perfectly good hedge?), but you can’t always account for people’s eccentricities.

This is a nationwide fundraising event where volunteers bake and sell cupcakes to raise money for the SPCA to fight animal cruelty.  Of course, if you’re not into baking you can still help by buying the tasty treats 🙂

To find out more, here is the Webpage

Over two hundred people came to the Report Back session on 10 July which the Working Group hosted. The Working Group members enjoyed talking with attendees about the work that they have been doing. We got some excellent feedback during the session which will contribute to the development of the vision and action document.

In case you didn’t make it – here’s the link to a post on the Council website which includes the graphic panels that were up on the walls and talks about the next steps.

Ngâ mihi, nâ
Sam