Have your say: Time to move on

Cr Tricia Cutforth says only 11per cent of Whangarei residents support Hundertwasser.

I moved the notice of motion for council to again reject the Hundertwasser proposal. Why?
Because in May, a comprehensive, scientific survey of residents showed that only 11 per cent of Whangarei people strongly supported the Hundertwasser and, accordingly, in June council voted to reject the project.

In July, council considered a proposal to ask the public, over a three-month period, for their new ideas and proposals about the future use of the former Harbour Board building at the Town Basin.

Instead, some councillors successfully moved to truncate this process to only two months and to add in some very tight criteria that proposals had to address. A number of councillors were concerned about the tightened time frame and criteria.

These concerns were found to be valid when the Hundertwasser project was resubmitted, supposedly as a "new" proposal.

Some councillors felt this was not ethically fair or reasonable.

The content of the project was substantially unchanged and the project had already been rejected by council.

Sure enough, it became clear that the assessment criteria would advantage a project that had had years of development and considerable financial assistance (including at least $1.7 million in ratepayer funding, not to mention council staff time and resources) over any proposal that had been put together as an expression of interest over a matter of weeks.

Hence the notice of motion.

It was my, and others', hope that at this latest meeting, council would essentially ratify its June decision, and again reject the HAC proposal.

Because the reality is that, until that happens, genuinely new proposals for the use of the Harbour Board Building cannot be considered in a fair and reasonable way.

Tricia Cutforth
Councillor, Denby Ward

What do you think? Comment below.