Today August 1st is the last day to have your say that Raglan Community Board should cover Te Mata, Te Uku and Waitetuna.
Raglanite John Lawson, ” “You might recall a well-attended meeting in 2016, with David Hammond, speaking about ‘Community Empowerment’. Now is the chance to do something about it. Submissions to the District and Regional Council Representation Reviews will help decide how we get to elect our local councillors and boards.”
To make it easy to make a submission John Lawson (51 Cliff St, Raglan 07 825 7866 email johnrag@vodafone.co.nz) of Whaingaroa Environmental Defence IncorporatedRegistered no.1912150 has come up with the following kit-set:
“You can put in two submissions and might want to follow these lines –
2018 Representation Review Initial Proposal Are the rules right for me? Please provide your feedback by 5pm 1 August 2018
Name/organisation
Postal address Raglan Postcode 3225 Email Phone 825 Preferred method of contact Email
A hearing will be held on 29 August 2018. Do you want to speak about your submission at this hearing? Yes
Do you support the 2018 Representation Review Initial Proposal? No Can you tell us why?
72.4% of ‘key stakeholders’ wanted new community boards established, yet the only proposed change is to divide one board. I believe WDC should follow the example of Thames Coromandel, which has divided its whole district between community boards and devolved local powers to them (see https://www.tcdc.govt.nz/Your-Council/About-Us/Community-Governance/).
It takes about an hour to drive between Ngaruawāhia and Raglan. Expansion of area offices would therefore save considerable staff time, as well as being better for the environment.
It would also allow decisions to be made by people more familiar with the area. For example, in 2014 Raglan Community Board went to some trouble to get the views of over 300 people on priorities for spending. Despite that, the recent LTP included a proposal to spend $161,000 on pill-box restoration, yet ignored the preferred priorities. $850,000 is about to be wasted on a toilet and carpark scheme, which fails to increase capacity, but which will increase stormwater pollution beside a shellfish bed. The money could have been used to promote the priorities identified in 2014.
The existing Raglan ward boundary is well outside the Raglan Community Board boundary
Proposals to expand the areas of Huntly and Raglan community boards were rejected at Council’s workshop on 15 May 2018 to retain, “the focus of these boards on their respective urban areas”. As Raglan Community Board area includes the whole of Mount Karioi, that focus has already been lost. The RCB area should either be redrawn to include only the urban area, or, preferably, expanded to the ward boundary, so as to include Te Mata, Te Uku and Waitetuna, which all have close links to Raglan.
As noted in the report, catchments are natural geographic boundaries, with roading networks and similar farming, forestry and tourism. Each catchment also pays a rate related to the work being done by its catchment zone committee. Catchment based representation would better focus attention on the work of the zone committees and provide a more direct democratic input to them.
