KEY POINTS:
The Auckland City Council has failed to provide proper parks for the first residents at the Stonefields community in the old Mt Wellington quarry.
The first family moved into Stonefields in July, and 18 families are now living in the new suburb that will eventually have 2900 homes and apartments for 6500 residents.
The council's city development general manager, John Duthie, said yesterday the council had made a start on two parks. They had been laid out in grass, but things such as trees and children's playgrounds were still to go in. Work on completing the two parks is due to begin next month.
Progress on the parks has provoked a political storm at the council after Mayor John Banks and Citizens & Ratepayers councillors accepted the advice of officers to defer a $7 million park network for three years.
The decision to defer work on eight neighbourhood parks, a lake and wetland at the 110ha Stonefields development is part of the council's proposed new 10-year budget.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of capital works are being deferred or cut to hold rates to inflation.
Fletcher Residential general manager David Halsey yesterday said he was unaware of the council deferring work on the parks.
The master-planned community is being marketed by Fletcher Living "so that every home at Stonefields is within a short five-minute walk to a neighbourhood park".
A spokeswoman for the developer, Landco, said the company was seeking clarification from the council about timing and comments at Tuesday's meeting that the project had slowed down. The company did not want to comment further, she said.
Mr Duthie said the council was pacing expenditure on parks to match development at Stonefields.
"There is a slowdown [in the property sector], but there are other parts of Auckland where it is more severe than at Stonefields. But it is clearly not going at the same pace as they originally anticipated," he said.
City Vision-Labour councillors Cathy Casey and Leila Boyle are highly critical of the council for deferring work at Stonefields.
Dr Casey said the reality at Stonefields flew in the face of advertising material and could amount to false advertising.
Leila Boyle said Stonefields was key to demonstrating how the council dealt with intensification.
"The council needs to get it right and I don't think it is right to have people moving in with no infrastructure to support them, including parks."
Leila Boyle said Stonefields was part of the Tamaki area with the largest amount of expected population growth in the city, but bore the brunt of proposed budget cuts by C&R.
