We hope the existing councilors will also be exiting councilors 9 days from now. Media release from Gywnn Compton:
News that Kāpiti Coast District Council has purchased a piece of prime commercial land at 26 Marine Parade in Paraparaumu Beach, valued at $1.6 million, following the owner being unable to develop it due to Council’s restrictive planning rules, suggests a failure of both Council and Mayor K. Gurunathan to make Council genuinely easy to do business with, says Kāpiti Coast mayoral candidate Gwynn Compton.
“The fact that one of Kāpiti’s largest and most experienced property developers couldn’t make a prime piece of waterfront land at Paraparaumu Beach commercially viable due to Council’s restrictive planning rules, exposes Council’s ‘Open for Business’ culture as an abject failure. Things need to urgently change at Council if our district is to properly manage the rapid growth we’re experiencing, and we’re fast running out of time with the opening of Transmission Gully less than a year away,” says Mr Compton.
Gwynn Compton has also called out Mayor K. Gurunathan, with the purchase of 26 Marine Parade illustrating that the Mayor has failed to deliver on his campaign promises from 2016.
“Mayor K. Gurunathan needs to front up and explain his inability to deliver on his promises. He’s talked a big game in previous campaigns about making Council more open for business, as well as having Council conduct itself in a genuinely open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner. Yet here we are, just days out from an election, with the news that Council’s failure to be open for business has forced a sizeable developer to sell their land.
“What’s more, despite elected members pleading Council’s poverty on the campaign trail when defending steep rates rises and the inability to adequately fund community facilities, Council has somehow managed to whip out the chequebook to purchase this land at short notice. On top of that, our community has been left in the dark as to what’s happening, how much has been paid, or what Council even plans to do with the land.
“If we’re serious about meeting the challenge of accommodating the rapid growth Kāpiti is experiencing, then we need to be enabling smart development, not holding it back. As Mayor, I’ll use the upcoming independent review of Council as a lever to get real change and ensure that Council works for and empowers our communities, rather than working against them as so often seems to be the case now.”
Maybe
Ah the perils of being told about something on facebook and belting out a press release a few hours later. K.C.D.C. and every other council in NZ, have a ‘strategic land purchase ‘ fund for decades, to enable the organisation to make the best advantage of opportunities to purchase vital small pockets of land. The writers complete lack of experience is showing here. Also the purchase figure is quite wrong. How about a little less abuse of the Mayor, and a little more fact? Would be helpful.
It would be helpful to explain what makes this property ‘vital’ when the CE admits the council has no firm ideas on what to do with it. And the purchase price in the headline is about 10% above the actual, which is a little out, but hardly ‘quite wrong.’
Your initial post on the FB page was this Jackie: “Jackie Elliott If this is true, this purchase is not in alignment within the LTP. BTW Great questions for the CEO from Darren.” Have you changed your mind on that? I can’t fathom how this could be considered “strategic” when you didn’t know that piece of land was under consideration and neither does the CEO have any firm plans for it. I realise you weren’t at the council meeting that approved the purchase and initially on hearing the news you were as surprised as the rest of the folk on the FB post.
Hi Katharine, yes I have changed my mind, and I was initially in as much of an information vaccum as veryone else, as I did not attend the meeting due to a family funeral. But with the explanation from the C.E, I am more than happy with this central strategic purchase. A stated use is for futue redevelopement of the fragmented and quite backwards Paraparaumu Beach towwn centre as it hasn’t been significantly changed since the 1950’s and 60’s when my family had quite a few shops here. It is about time! Cr Elliott