Rotorua Lakes Council local elections - hoarding complaints revealed

There have been 18 election hoarding complaints in Rotorua. Photo / File

Strong winds, misunderstandings, and land technicalities are the root of electoral hoarding complaints in Rotorua this election period.

Between August 12 and September 19 the Rotorua Lakes Council received 18 complaints about candidate hoardings.

Rules around hoarding placements are laid out in the council's election sign guidelines and its Signs on Roads Bylaw.

Signs must be on private property with property owner consent, must not be more than 3sq m or 3m tall and are not allowed in a public place, on a public building or in any road
reserve including any Rotorua Lakes Council tree, fence, parks furniture or sign.

Mayoral candidate Kalaadevi Ananda had three complaints about her hoardings, one for a sign on a road reserve, and two relating to permission issues.

Ananda said: "All our hoardings were put up after getting permission from those living there."

Mayoral candidate Kalaadevi Ananda. Photo / Mead Norton

Ananda said she was told about the three complaints on various dates and "responded as soon as we could gather the manpower and tools".

She said the road reserve complaint related to a sign slightly outside the property boundary.

"The people at the property garden up to the retaining wall next to the pedestrian area, so we placed the sign using their example. After the complaint, we moved the sign 2m back to be within the property boundary."

For the first sign with a permission issue, "a volunteer attached a small sign to his letterbox. His neighbour however did not want the sign there so the volunteer took the sign down as it is a cross-leased section and permissions are complicated".

For the second, "in the recent strong winds, our permitted sign blew off and landed on someone's front lawn. We retrieved it as soon as we could. We are now using nails with washers".

Rural ward candidate Karen Barker. Photo / Andrew Warner

Rural candidate Karen Barker had two complaints about her hoardings, one at Waikaukau Rd and one at the corner of Tumunui and Corbet Roads.

Barker said she did not have a sign at Waikaukau Rd.

She said the second complaint referenced a sign put on a fence with the permission of the property owner, but its supports were touching the road reserve beneath.

She was told about the issue on September 2, a Friday, while she and her husband were away - she requested permission to wait until they returned on Monday to rectify it, which was given.

She and her husband flicked the supports into the paddock of the person who gave permission for the sign to be on their land.

Barker said she was "really sorry - it was an honest mistake and I didn't mean to cause inconvenience to the council chasing it all up".

She had since done an "audit" of her other hoardings to check there were no issues, she said.

There were four complaints about hoardings for the Rotorua District Residents and Ratepayers campaign, related to signs being erected on road reserves.

Chairman and mayoral candidate Reynold Macpherson said "of the 56 hoardings and 27 panels that RDRR had erected ... we have had four complaints".

Mayoral candidate Reynold Macpherson. Photo / Andrew Warner

He said two of the complaints related to signs placed with owner permission in the same place as in previous elections. He said in both cases the hoardings were moved after the complaints.

"The third was about a sign mistakenly erected on railway land instead of at the Rail Park at Ngongotaha. It was moved 500m."

Macpherson said the fourth complaint was when a wife had given permission but the husband did not so it was moved.

Macpherson gave "all credit to council officials who passed on the complaints promptly. And to our co-ordinator of hoardings who usually responded within a day or two depending on the weather."

Two hoardings from council candidate Gregg Brown had received complaints.

One was about a hoarding that had blown over, and the other two were about one hoarding erected on a road reserve.

Brown said the road reserve issue "stemmed from a miscommunication with the property owner and was rectified immediately".

Council candidate Gregg Brown. Photo / supplied

"I did not receive notification of the other but it was rectified when a friend advised the sign had blown over in the storm we had last week."

Mayoral candidate Fletcher Tabuteau had six complaints about three of his hoardings.

Four complaints were about one hoarding on Te Ngae Rd for its size and height.

Another was about the size and height of one at Stembridge Rd, and the final one was about a sign at Hemo Gorge which was said to be interfering with another sign.

The size complaints were logged by the council as actioned, but the Hemo Gorge complaint was not recorded as such.

Tabuteau did not wish to comment.

Mayoral candidate Fletcher Tabuteau. Photo / Andrew Warner