At Waikato District’s Annual Plan submissions session in Ngaruawahia on Tuesday 21st, Council GM Tim Harty confirmed that all community buildings, community houses, Plunket rooms, halls, kindys, council buildings and retail food premises in Raglan and other parts of the Waikato District would be required to have arrestons fitted in their sinks. This was the opposite of information given by Mayor Sanson and CEO Ion at public meetings throughout the District when they said that the Trade Waste regime only applied to industries. After Mr Harty had explained to the Mayor and CEO about arrestons, he asked submitter Mr Gallagher, “Does that answer your question?” Mr Gallagher, speaking on behalf of the Raglan Old School Arts Centre said it didn’t, that it just stated what he already knew. He said, “My question is, who will pay for these?”. Mr Harty did not answer that question. The Raglan Arts Centre had applied for a grant to cover the cost of fitting the arrestons.
John Lawson challenged the validity of the consultation process pointing out the low number of submissions, glitches in the online submission system and poor distribution of the Waikato Council’s Link newsletter. He also raised on behalf of Lesley Syme, the public excluded Council meeting held to discuss the Rangitahi Peninsula proposal with the Raglan Land Company. CEO Gavin Ion said that the Raglan Land Company reps were experts and therefore allowed to be at the meeting.
Rodger Gallagher also spoke on behalf of the Raglan Community Board, reminding the Councillors of the Board’s top four priorities of public transport, footpaths in Simon Rd and Bow St, and the James Street coastal upgrade. He also gave a personal presentation called, ‘Looking on the bright side for Raglan’, highlighting some positive points in the draft annual plan. One Councillor complemented him on the ‘Monty Python’ type presentation. Other Councillors seemed surprised to learn about the high percentage of unoccupied dwellings in Raglan (Since the meeting confirmed as 28% in 2006) and that Raglan had a self contained water system supplied from natural springs.
Thank you Rodger and John for presenting your submissions to the attentive WDC General Managers. It is concering, that the submission process was flawed and that some present were unaware of the number of vacant properties in Raglan and the source of Raglan’s watersupply.
At least one Raglan submitter gave up when the on-line system kept giving error messages. I’d be interested to hear how many more there were and how many didn’t receive Link.
Hi John
I unfortunately had to give up on my submission. I sent a personal one in writing but was working on the online one from the Community House and it just wouldn’t work. Had to abandon it because I ran out of time
Chrissy