All that was expected to take a year or more, and there was no guarantee of success. And the cost, guesstimated by the council at up to $8000 (if there was no need for a hearing), would have to be met by the school, whether the walkway was stopped or not. As a final insult, the school would have to buy the land back, at valuation, if it was stopped.
The letter that delivered that news, which had a gestation period of three months, written by a council road legalisation officer, offended everyone, from the mayor and councillors to the community board and the school. It prompted an apology from the council, which said the information provided was technically correct but might have been couched in friendlier terms. Three years later nothing has happened. The walkway is still being used by ne'er do wells, and the school continues to fret over the threat they pose to pupils.
In 2009 then community board member Phil Cross undertook to convene a meeting involving all parties, including the police and bona fide users of the walkway, where he would be tabling a "large bucket of common sense". Meanwhile, he and Labour list MP Shane Jones offered a down payment on that common sense by offering the poles that would be needed to close the walkway if a local farmer was prepared to donate the use of a post thumper.
It is not clear what happened to Mr Cross' bucket of common sense, but it's presumably still waiting to be used. The walkway is still open, it is still being abused, and Pompallier continues to hold real fears for the safety of pupils.
Three years ago principal Daniel Pepper told the Northland Age that on one occasion a drunk had entered the school grounds from the walkway, finally plonking himself in the sandpit until the police came and took him away, while pupils had been offered drugs, cigarettes and in one case a condom. Mr Pepper said he was tired of fearing for the safety of his 158 pupils, adding that he would have hated to have to call a parent to tell them something horrible had happened to their child.
He undertook to note all incidents witnessed by teachers or parents, starting with a brawl between two women on the Taaffe St footbridge while children were walking home. There was no shortage of incidents to record, according to correspondents to the Age. One claimed that children were being verbally abused, rubbish was being thrown over the fence, a Year 1 boy had been told by a teenager/adult that he was "... sexy"; a brawl involving three drunken adults had spilled into the school grounds, and pupils were witness to swearing, screaming and being "brown-eyed".
The school's offer to take over the walkway and improve it with plants and art presumably fizzled once it became clear it would be getting a bill for thousands of dollars from the council for the privilege.
Now the school has told the community board that there are alternative pedestrian options that did not exist in 1951, and that the council's view in 2009, that the siting of Pak'nSave supported retaining the walkway, no longer applied either. Meanwhile, the walkway remained as dangerous as it had been, and a source of frustration for the police.
The council hadn't even maintained it, or surfaced it appropriately, as its predecessor had undertaken to do in 1951.
And if none of that persuades the council that this is one of those rare occasions when something needs to be done rather more quickly than the book strictly allows, the school's board of trustees has pointed out that a commissioner was appointed to another local primary school last year as the result of a "lack of governance". Pompallier, on the other hand, had identified the need to take a proactive approach to providing a safe environment for its children. The trustees hoped the council agreed.
It would be surprising in the extreme if the council did not agree, but that doesn't mean it will dip into Phil Cross' bucket of common sense, even though Pompallier has bolstered its case for closure by submitting to the community board a petition signed by some 300 people calling for closure, some of the signatories living in the streets that supposedly benefit from the shortcut.
To the layman the answer would appear simple - close the walkway, let the school do something positive with it, and let the violent, drunk and drug-addled go somewhere else. Surely the council has the legal right, and the guts, to do that in response to genuine public danger. Let anyone who wants to challenge that decision do so, and good luck to them.
At the end of the day the shortest route to a solution would be to close the footbridge at the bottom of the walkway, without which it would be useless in terms of providing pedestrian access to Kaitaia's shops. The bridge was reportedly all but knackered in 2009, and, without any form of maintenance since, one would be surprised if it's in any better shape three years on. Community board chairman Dennis Bowman said last month the bridge was in need of extensive repairs, the board proposing to close it "temporarily", effectively to see what public reaction that attracted.
All the council needs do now is agree that it won't be spending great wads of cash on repairing the bridge and the problem is solved. Not instantly - these things, unfortunately, for reasons no one outside the local government system understands, tend to happen slowly, and one suspects at sufficient cost to build a harbour bridge lookalike - but it would be quicker than consulting everyone who lives within a 10-kilometre radius and an Environment Court hearing if one of them objects.
Let's not have another three-year hiatus. The council needs to do this in the best interests of the community.
There is a clear issue of public safety here, and that takes precedence over processes that simply never end.
