The seal takes a tour downstairs at the Mount Maunganui home of the Ross family. Photo / Supplied
The seal takes a tour downstairs at the Mount Maunganui home of the Ross family. Photo / Supplied
Bay of Plenty Times is looking back at the stories of 2022. Here’s what made headlines in August:
August 3:
Saed Rajput sleeps each night with an iPad next to his bed playing security camera footage from outside his store, the Ōmokoroa Minimart and Takeaways.
In the year since he and his wife Joana bought the business, it was burgled twice before being ram raided in April, leaving the couple emotionally and financially scarred.
He told his story after the release of a police report showing the Bay of Plenty had the second-highest number of ram raids in New Zealand in the year to October. The 19 per cent share was second only to Waikato’s 27 per cent.
Under-fire National MP Sam Uffindell was stood down from the party’s caucus, pending an investigation into further “very concerning accusations” surrounding his past behaviour.
In a statement, National Party leader Christopher Luxon said he had been made aware of new allegations about Uffindell’s behaviour toward a female flatmate while Uffindell was at university in 2003.
The woman told RNZ Uffindell was an aggressive bully who once pounded on her bedroom door, screaming obscenities, until she fled through her window.
Uffindell denied any accusations he was involved in bullying or intimidatory behaviour while at university.
A $100 million-plus retirement and aged care facility was set to be built by private developers on the site of a former Tauranga City Council elder housing village.
The proposal was described as “good news” by the local ratepayers’ association president and one that “closely aligned” with the council’s strategic objectives for the property.
The facility was planned for the former Pitau Rd elder housing village site after the council commissioners decided last year to sell it to private developers.
It would provide more than 80 care and dementia beds and more than 100 independent retirement apartments, and would be built by 2026.
An illustration of the proposed facility. Photo / Supplied
August 16:
A woman working from home alone was frozen in fear when a strange and “scary” man came into her home without knocking, she says.
Bethlehem resident Olivia Fairhurst was working from home on Wednesday morning when she heard a voice call out a greeting from what sounded like her dining room.
“I usually have the sliding door at the back of the house open for air and sunlight,” Fairhurst told the Bay of Plenty Times.
Of all the homes for a seal to enter, one managed to chase a cat into the Mount Maunganui residence of a marine biologist - who was not even around to see it.
University of Waikato researcher Phil Ross said his wife Jenn Ross’ “hilarious” encounter in their lounge on Wednesday, while he was away for work, had already become a family joke. “This was the one kind of family emergency where a marine biologist would have been useful - I missed my time to shine,” Phil said.
He said his wife got up on Wednesday morning to go out and thought she heard something “barking” and “scurrying” away as she hopped into the car.
Thinking it was just a neighbourhood dog, she headed out.
On her return, she parked in the garage and went into the house to find not a dog but a “small and very cute” New Zealand fur seal hanging out in the lounge.
That’s how many singletons aged in their 50s feel when they turn up to foodbanks and social agencies seeking assistance.
Providers said they were seeing an increase in the number of middle-aged single people seeking assistance as they struggled to cope with the skyrocketing cost of living as well as life-changing events such as marriage breakups, the death of a partner and loss of income.
The amount of Tauranga household waste ending up in the local landfill has nearly halved since the city’s ratepayer-funded kerbside collection service was introduced last year.
The new kerbside service, which added food scraps, recycling, rubbish, and optional garden waste bins to the existing glass recycling collections, was launched on July 1, 2021.
Tauranga City Council’s sustainability and waste manager Sam Fellows told the Bay of Plenty Times that, collectively, the community had made a “massive difference”, by reducing the amount of waste going to landfill by up to 89 kilograms per person a year.
Debbie Woolrich is the “smiling face” driving people to their cancer appointments. And this week she’ll be helping the Cancer Society raise valuable funds for the work it does.
Woolrich had breast cancer in 2002. She had a mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstruction six years later.
She was in her third week without pay, scraping by on savings - and she did not know how long the stalemate between the company and union would continue. But she was not willing to back down.
Kotuhi and 144 of her colleagues had been locked out of their workplace, the Essity paper mill in Kawerau, since August 9.
Workers said they were stressed, losing sleep and wondering when they would next get paid, with one saying in his opinion the company was trying to “starve us out until we go back”.
