Before the Waikanae Hotel was turned into a parking lot.  Just to the northwest of it is the Whakarongotai Marae.

What will councilors decide to name the old SH1?  A lot of names were submitted by the public, over 700 we’re told.  One was the “Jenny Rowan Highway” (we wonder who would want that? 🙂 ) Among the more creative suggestions was “Te Rauparaha’s Back Passage”…

An extract from a who’s who published in the early 1990s.  After this her best-known movie was made — The Piano (1993) — which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, making her the first woman ever to win the prestigious award. She also captured an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 1993 Oscars.

Her output since has been rather sporadic.

Just to the west of the footbridge to the Otaihanga Domain.

Coastal Ratepayers United (CRU) has succeeded once again in its legal challenge against Kapiti Coast District Council (KCDC) in the Environment Court. To date, CRU’s 100 % success rate in challenging KCDC over the Proposed District Plan and in particular, the coastal hazards is indicative of CRU’s commitment to good law and good science.

After the election of 2013, over 2013/14 Council:

1.      commissioned 2 independent reports at great expense and accepted all the recommendations in these reports.

2.      withdrew coastal hazard areas from the PDP.

3.      resolved that the community would be represented in any future work through a Coastal Advisory Group (or CAG).

Unfortunately, Council officers decided not to implement the resolutions of July 2014 accepting of all the recommendations of the independent report. Instead, they

A.         decided to keep the old coastal hazard provisions in the current plan

B.         withdrew the CAG

C.         have carried on developing new coastal hazard provisions without any community input.

When CRU discovered in 2016 that Council had no intention of implementing its 2014 decisions, it took Court action to challenge the legality of what the Council had done. Over 350 submitters on the PDP had lost their ability to present concerns and make submissions about coastal provisions because of the way that Council had proceeded.

The case was heard in November 2016. In July 2017, the Environment Court agreed with CRU and declared that Council had not followed the law in relation to withdrawing a number of PDP provisions.

Despite finding that the Council was not obliged to notify the existing hazard provisions which it intends to maintain, the Court did declare that the Council had used its power to withdraw other provisions in a way which contravened the Resource Management Act. In response to a Council argument that the declaration should not be made because it had subsequently fixed the problems, the Court declined to endorse any specific Council action and pointed to the fact that those actions were only taken because CRU had challenged the process.

Even though Council publicly resolved 3 years ago to set up the CAG and to notify a variation on coastal hazards, the Mayor now says that KCDC had an informal meeting at which most councillors decided to do something quite different. It is not clear to which meeting the Mayor refers because interested community groups and residents were not informed.

CRU’s only option now is to appeal to the High Court. If it is successful, it seems possible that the whole PDP may have to be renotified. It would be too late in the process to make either the simple changes requested by CRU or for the Council to follow the advice that it accepted in 2014. To date, ratepayers have paid over $6 million for a flawed document which should have been fixed in 2014 had the Council only followed the independent advice for which ratepayers paid.

Quentin Poole

CRU Spokesperson

The above presents in layman’s terms the significance of the actions.  The court decisions are crouched in the complex RMA terminology which is difficult to follow for those not versed in it.

For some history, here follows Christopher Ruthe’s statement from March 2013 [- Eds]

Last year, those owning coastal properties along the Kapiti Coast received a thunderbolt in the form of a letter from Kapiti Coast District Council. It advised the owners and inhabitants of 1800 homes – more than 4000 people – that their properties would be in the sea within 100 years.

The council had put a warning on the Land Information Memorandum, which tells prospective buyers that this catastrophe was likely. It also proposes highly restrictive policies and rules in its Proposed District Plan.

Coastal Ratepayers United was set up to fight that. It established from an early stage that the Kapiti Coast erosion hazard assessment that has been used to justify the changes was inaccurate, unreliable and overly conservative.

The assessment provides no analysis of the reliability of its forecasts nor the levels of risk in each area and was not adequately peer reviewed. It overstates in many areas the areas of land that are likely to be subject to coastal erosion.

That means the Proposed District Plan is also fundamentally flawed, as it is based on the hazard assessment, and that is why it must be redone.

The assessment has not been adequate under the provision of the Resource Management Act, which requires costs and benefits to be considered. In particular, there has been inadequate consideration of the social and economic effects on owners and occupiers of existing properties within the proposed hazard zones.

It also fails to have regard to the requirements of the Proposed Wellington Regional Policy Statement which requires the identification of areas at high risk from natural hazards because it exaggerates the extent of land likely to be affected by coastal hazards.

The assumptions are combined with a flawed methodology so the hazard lines do not indicate areas “likely” to be affected by erosion within 50 or 100 years. Instead they reflect a worst-case assessment of what is possible.

They are unreliable and speculative, and present an overly alarmist picture that has been used as the basis of the Proposed District Plan.

Despite Mayor Jenny Rowan [defeated in October 2013] saying the council has no policy of managed retreat, the proposed district plan says: “Natural shoreline movement will be accommodated by coastal management options including managed retreat”, and that dune systems will be “enabled to migrate inland in response to natural shoreline retreat”. That amounts to surrendering existing homes to the sea.

Other policies refer to the retreat of buildings and that the use of “hard structures” — buildings — will be actively discouraged.

The plan is incomprehensible in parts, even to experts used by Coastal Ratepayers United. Few affected people will understand the language in it.

As it stands, all the language difficulties, together with its numerous inconsistencies will result in Kapiti ratepayers suffering for the next decade from inconsistent rulings and interpretations by council staff, which will lead to expensive legal costs attempting to resolve matters. The plan needs to go back to the drawing boards.

The effect is the taking of beachfront properties by bureaucratic stealth, without any compensation to thousands mainly retired home owners.

For them, the whole scenario is a disaster, all based on a prediction that is unproven and very unlikely. That is why there is a sense of outrage.

Today we had morning tea with Alan Tristram and Roger Childs of the Kapiti Independent News during which our mutual dismay at the way the KCDC is run was the major topic.

However, they think that as bad as the KCDC is, the neigbouring Horowhenua District Council is even worse.

One of the several controversial things the HDC has done is abolish developer taxes which are there to pay for public infrastructure costs (such as water, stormwater wastewater) as well as other things involved with new property developments: the reason being that some of the councillors are developers!

The wording of section 6 of the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act is given below and it seems that a prosecution on it should have a reasonable chance of being successful.

The effective penalty stated in the following section of a prosecution not quashed through appeal is “the office of the member shall be vacated;” in other words, they are dismissed from the council.

Member of local authority or committee not to discuss or vote on question in which he has pecuniary interest

(1)

A member of a local authority or of a committee thereof shall not vote on or take part in the discussion of any matter before the governing body of that local authority or before that committee in which he has, directly or indirectly, any pecuniary interest, other than an interest in common with the public.

(1A)

Nothing in subsection (1) shall apply in any case where a member of a local authority or a committee of the local authority has been elected by or appointed to represent any activity, industry, business, organisation, or group of persons and his pecuniary interest is not different in kind from the interests of other persons in the activity, industry, business, organisation, or group by which the member is elected or in respect of which he is appointed.

(2)

For the purposes of subsection (1), where an incorporated company has, directly or indirectly, a pecuniary interest in a matter before the governing body of a local authority or before a committee thereof, a member of the local authority or, as the case may be, of the committee shall be deemed to have a pecuniary interest in the matter, if—

(a)
the member or his spouse or partner singly or between them own, whether directly or through a nominee, 10% or more of the issued capital of the company or of any other company controlling that company; or
(b)
the member or his spouse or partner is a member of the company, and either of them is the managing director or the general manager (by whatever names they are called) of the company; or
(c)
the member or his spouse or partner is a member of a company controlling the company having a pecuniary interest in the matter before the governing body of the local authority or, as the case may be, before the committee, and either the member or his spouse or partner is the managing director or the general manager (by whatever names they are called) of that controlling company; or
(d)
the member or his spouse or partner is the managing director or general manager (by whatever names they are called) of the company having a pecuniary interest in the matter before the governing body of the local authority or, as the case may be, before the committee, and either of them is a member of a company controlling that company.

(2A)

Where the spouse or partner of a member of a local authority or of any committee thereof has, directly or indirectly, a pecuniary interest in a matter before the governing body of a local authority or before a committee thereof as the owner or one of the owners (otherwise than as a member of an incorporated company) of an estate or interest in any real or personal property or of any business or as a party to any contract or proposed contract with the local authority, the member shall, for the purposes of subsection (1), be deemed to have a pecuniary interest in the matter.

(2B)

Nothing in subsection (2) or subsection (2A) shall apply with respect to the spouse or partner of any member where, at the time when the member took part in the discussion of or, as the case may be, voted on the matter before the local authority or committee, the member and his spouse or partner were living apart.

(3)

Nothing in subsection (1) shall apply with respect to any of the following matters:

(a)
any payment to or for the benefit of a member where it is legally payable and the amount or maximum amount or the rate or maximum rate of the payment has already been fixed; or
(b)
any contract of insurance insuring members against personal accident; or
(c)
an election or appointment of a member of the local authority to any office, notwithstanding that any remuneration or allowance is or may be payable in respect of that office; or
(d)
any formal resolution to seal or otherwise complete any contract or document in accordance with a resolution already adopted; or
(e)
the preparation, recommendation, approval, or review of a district plan under the Resource Management Act 1991 or any section of such a scheme, unless the matter relates to any variation or change of or departure from a district scheme or section thereof or to the conditional use of land as defined in that Act; or
(ea)
the preparation, recommendation, approval, or review of general schemes under the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act 1941 for the preventing or minimising of damage by floods and by erosion; or
(eb)
the preparation, recommendation, approval, or review of reports as to the effect or likely effect on the environment of any public work or proposed public work within the meaning of the Public Works Act 1981; or
(f)
any matter in which, in the opinion of the Auditor-General given before the vote or discussion and on written application to the Auditor-General for his or her opinion, the pecuniary interest of a member is so remote or insignificant that it cannot reasonably be regarded as likely to influence him in voting on or taking part in the discussion of that matter.

(4)

Notwithstanding anything in subsection (1), the Auditor-General may, of his or her own motion or upon written application made to him or her by the member concerned, declare that that subsection shall not apply with respect to any specified matter or specified class of matter to be considered by the local authority or committee, as the case may be, if the Auditor-General is satisfied that the application of that subsection would impede the transaction of business by the local authority or committee or that it would be in the interests of the electors or inhabitants of the district of the local authority or of the area under its jurisdiction that the subsection should not apply.

(5)

Any person who under subsection (1) is prohibited from voting on or taking part in the discussion of any matter at any meeting at which he is present shall, when the matter is raised before the local authority or committee of which he is a member, declare to the meeting that he has a pecuniary interest in the matter, and the fact of the disclosure of interest and of the abstention from discussion and voting shall be recorded in the minutes of the meeting. Any such record in the minutes of the meeting shall be prima facie evidence of its contents, in the event of any question arising as to whether a member made a disclosure of interest and abstained from discussion and voting.

(6)

Notwithstanding anything in subsection (1), a member of any of the following bodies:

(a)
the University Grants Committee:
(b)
the Council of Massey University:
(c)
the Council of the University of Auckland:
(d)
the Council of the University of Canterbury:
(e)
the Council of the University of Otago:
(f)
the Council of the University of Waikato:
(g)
the Council of the Victoria University of Wellington:
(gg)
[Repealed]
(h)
the Council of Lincoln University:
(i)
[Repealed]
(j)
[Repealed]
(k)
[Repealed]
shall be entitled to take part in the discussion before that body, or any committee thereof, of any matter that directly or indirectly affects his salary or allowances, but shall not be entitled to vote thereon.

I and Bernie Randall of the Raumati Paraparaumu Community Board are concerned that Kapiti Coast District Council may be following the slippery slope taken by Horowhenua District Council by filtering and blocking emails sent by citizens.

We have asked KCDC Chief Executive Patrick Dougherty for an assurance that his Council are not filtering, screening, blocking or treating differently any emails sent to staff, councillors or Community Board members.

We believe that Mayor K Gurunathan has also asked for an assurance a week ago.

There has been no response and frankly, the silence is deafening. We would have expected an immediate reply and confirmation that our democratic system of open and transparent communication to staff and elected members is not compromised by censorship, filtering and managerial micro-management.

We urge Mr Dougherty to speedily reply and state whether communication to Council is being monitored and filtered.

Update on the KC News website: 

KCDC’s Chief Information Officer [presumably this means ‘Chief Spin Doctor’] Ewen Church, responded to KCNews the following;

“The Kāpiti Coast District Council does not screen, filter or block any emails sent to staff, councillors or community board members unless they specifically make a request to a group manager or the Chief Executive to do so.”

It is something that should be included in an urgently needed full external audit of the KCDC — [Eds]

DOCs Dirty Dozen Saloon was a hit at Fieldays. Now there’s a bounty out for DOCs most wanted weeds. Submit sightings of the Dirty Dozen weeds and you’ll be in to win $100.

via DOC’s ‘most wanted’ weeds — Conservation blog

FROM Stuff.co.nz A council’s interception of politicians’ emails is a “constitutional outrage”, a legal expert says. Horowhenua District Council chief executive David Clapperton screened emails to both staff and councillors, a leaked draft audit shows, and there are calls for him to step aside as the matter is investigated. Victoria University senior lecturer in law Dean […]

via Intercepting politicians’ email a ‘constitutional outrage’ — Rangitikei Enviromental Health Watch

There have been a few of these on social media in the past several days and we make the following suggestions:

1. If you need to leave a car outside, particularly on the street, don’t leave valuables in it; take them inside.
2. If there’s no organised Neigbourhood Watch where you are, consider doing a regular constitutional stroll around your immediate block(s), perhaps with the dog. You’ll quickly get a feel for what’s normal and anything that doesn’t look right.  Remember thieves need to carry their loot away in something; if it’s not a another car, it could be in a backpack and they could be on a bike.
3. Get a picture with your cellphone of anything that doesn’t look right, and look for reports of a theft in the area at about that time.