This subject has dominated the concerns of the Waikanae Community Board since late 2019, but didn’t get very far because of the previous mayor’s obsession with his Gateway vanity project instead, and the difficult council officer officer in charge, Alison Law. However, discussion options have gathered pace in the last year or so and Alison Law has gone to Tauranga. Now three main options are ready for consultation,

The report occupies pages 6-20 in the Agenda for the council meeting held yesterday. We delayed posting on it earlier to listen to what elected members had to say about it at the meeting, but there was little comment.

Rather than post the whole 16 pages, above are the first 5, and the link to the whole pdf is here.

It’s important that the size of the building encompasses a solid degree of ‘future proofing’ in floor area requirement because the Waikanae population is steadily increasing with new developments; particularly those of the Maypole company, as well as the Summerset village.

The big capital outlay for the most expensive option is likely to alarm Ratepayers outside Waikanae (and probably quite a few in Waikanae), however, one council project that can and should be abandoned to compensate for the cost is the futile seawall in Paekakariki which now involves the best part of $20 million expenditure. Seawalls like that don’t work and the far better option, as mentioned in our Council Long Term Plan submission in June 2021, is to dump a whole lot more big rocks to fortify what has been erected there already.