Council seeks input on 300 local parks

People in Manukau City are to be asked what they think of their small, neighbourhood parks.

There are about 300 parks the size of four or five sections throughout the city. They are considered strategic assets and valuable, irrespective of whether they are used or contain only a few trees.

With the Manukau City Council having just finished its budgeting exercise for the coming year, the inevitable question has been posed: can any parks be sold to offset the rate increase?

Staff have recommended against disposal under the Reserves Act, noting public resistance to sales of parks. There is not understood to be any political pressure to sell the parks.

While the value of parkland can be determined on recreation, ecological, landscape or heritage grounds it is harder to work out the value a community puts on a park.

"There are few, if any, local parks that do not have a future in the parks network." said senior parks planner Malcolm Page.

Now the council is seeking feedback from people to see if Manukau has too many neighbourhood parks and if not how they can be improved.

Mr Page said work on the Draft Neighbourhood Parks Management Plan had identified the main issue facing neighbourhood parks as underdevelopment, not oversupply.

Mr Page said he was keen to explore how the diverse ethnic communities of Manukau used their parks.

"Patterns of use across the city may vary and we would welcome that ... We want these parks to serve local communities. So we want people to tell us what they want todo."

He said safety was another increasingly important issue.

"Access to some parks is not good. Under today's rules we would take much wider entrances. There are improvements we could make with sightlines. There are improvements we could make in planting.

"We are becoming much more safety conscious. We have some great little parks around but they are accessed by little small alleyways. That is not really what we do today."

The council will call for submissions in a week or two. Submissions close on June 1.