Your Say: Reduce hassle of finding a park

I read with interest, the plight of a number of central city business's and organisations who are being, or are likely to be, adversely affected by changes to parking design in various parts of the central city.

At various times during the year, we seek to promote our fair town as a great place to come to for various events. And while people do come, parking in our central business district is pushed to the limit.

Council used to have a couple of significant parking spaces off St Hill St, until we sold that to a developer. We now have a number of medium-sized commercial buildings unoccupied as a result.

Please permit me to suggest a possible solution that would also provide scope for something quite special in the middle of our town.

There are at least three buildings that are located between the Avenue and parallel streets. Two former Farmers Buildings, and the old Farmers Co-op store in the lower block which appears to be empty out the back.

Council should either buy these sites and convert them to a mix of parking / green space opening into the Avenue, or promote the sites to a commercial developer that operates parking facilities around the country.

Instead of empty shops, green spaces that attract us to visit town, take a rest, enjoy a little nature.

I recently visited the growing town of Blenheim where I noticed a number of interesting developments.

In a town that in 2006 had a population of about 29,000, I noticed that they had a significant parking building in the middle of town operated by a commercial parking organisation, a significant sports stadium/swimming complex that would easily rival any sports facility outside of the main centres, five large supermarkets, and a new live theatre/events centre, as well as all of the other facilities that makes Blenheim a rather special place.

Yes it has it's problems and growing pains will certainly present them with more.

Back to Whanganui, from my limited understanding of the Whanganui Regeneration Strategy, council wants to promote less traffic in the middle of town, and more use of non vehicular traffic, coupled with the shared cycle way down St Hill Street and better flow around our civic centre.

If we are to remove parking from the main street, given that in the forseeable future, driving to town will still be the norm, and if we want to attract visitors to come and shop / experience our friendly little town then we surely need to do something to reduce the hassles of doing so.

One only has to look at our Saturday Market, which on a busy weekend can be a mission to park anywhere near, to see that more needs to be done to accommodate our petrol guzzling machinery.

If there was parking on the site of the Farmers building in Watt Street, just think how special a tram trip from Majestic Square would be down to the market and back again. Might be an incentive to restore more trams and actually make something more than a novelty of it.

C WARREN, Kaitoke

Surprising role

With regard to the item in the Wanganui Chronicle on November 4 that Annette Main was appointed to a local Maori advisory group (Whanganui River) by the Whanganui District Council is not that surprising.

Not that surprising considering many people believe she is still standing in the shadows of some of her former colleagues on the local council. Maybe a bit unfair to say she is pulling some of their strings, but stranger things have happened in local government circles.

What surprises me is that the council can engage Ms Main for this role and at what cost? Another questionable layer of bureaucracy at the ratepayers expense?

Considering the amount of taxpayer money the previous government gave Tariana Turia and Turama Hawira to act and speak for the river, I would have thought these two "guardians/spokespersons" could both address matters of interest with the council without having another party involved.

BOB WALKER, St John's Hill

EDITOR'S NOTE: No money (neither taxpayers' nor ratepayers') has, as yet, been allocated for these roles.

STV system

Ask anyone how Single Transferable Voting (STV) works and I haven't found anyone who can explain it. They say by numbering the voting paper in order of preference they are voting for all those nominated candidates. Not one person suggests that they are voting for just one candidate.

The next paragraph that is copied from a publication by The Department of Internal Affairs, titled, Choosing Electoral Systems in Local Government in NZ, page 24, explains lot.

"The STV electoral system is unfamiliar to most New Zealanders. Many people understand how to cast their votes (by ranking candidates in order of preference) but they do not understand how the result is arrived at. Some find it difficult to understand why they have only one vote when there are a number of vacancies to be filled."

Examining Whanganui District Health Board election results for the last three elections I had discovered that the candidates that won the first iteration, that's when the first preferences are counted, were the candidates that were elected.

It gradually became clear that each elector was only voting for one candidate, and that the first, and only some of the second preferences were used.

The second paragraph of this letter regarding Choosing Electoral Systems, that I was fortunate enough to stumble across, plus 2010 Wellington City Council election results, displayed on a spread sheet, showing the distribution of votes, proved to me, that this is what happens.

First preference votes are important to be elected under the STV system. A candidate who has a large number of second and third preference votes, and only a few first preference votes, would never be elected.

Under First Past the Post (FPP), a candidate standing for council for the Whanganui District Council has to convince more than 6000 electors to vote for them. The same candidate under STV, because of its quota system, only needs about 1350 first preference votes, to be elected.

I can only speculate as to the reason Steve Barron told me not once but twice; "you don't have to know how it works, just trust the system".

JOHN CARSON, Springvale