Bright Wings

Mounted Police to control Masterton teenage drinking

News of the Perry/Chapel Street carpark being used for late-night teenage binge drinking points to the need for a rethink as to how the Masterton CDB is managed at night.

I hate driving along Chapel Street late at night. The footpaths are thick with heavily intoxicated teenagers, who frequently stray onto the road and have a very casual attitude to traffic.

The Police have power to act: Masterton District Council's liquor control by-law bans drinking throughout the CBD and adjoining parks.

Mounted police
I'd like to see one or two mounted police used to patrol the CBD at night. A police officer on a horse has a much more intimate view of what is going on, a horse is highly manoeuvrable, and its size makes it very good for crowd control.

Officers on horses can ride through the parks and other areas where troublemakers gather.

Masterton is ideally placed to use horses for patrols with its proximity to the rural hinterland. I'm sure police who are also experienced riders would jump at the chance to combine their hobby with their work.

Other suggestions

• The Council could look at hiring Walkwise "safety ambassadors" who also patrol the CBD at night, acting as eyes and ears for the Police.
• Play Barry Manilow music from speakers in the popular congregating areas.
• Add additional CCTV cameras 
• Where possible, involve parents and help them see they are accountable for the actions of their teenagers.
• Attempt to find out who is buying the alcohol for these teenagers, and where.  
• With local churches, investigate providing a safe, van-based, mobile drop-in centre and transport home, such as is provided in Wellington.  

There need to be some unpalatable consequences for these drunken young people.  For example, if you are caught drinking in a public place like the CBD, you are hauled out of bed at 6 am by the Police the following weekend and made to clean up the CBD, including vomit. 

The Police and Masterton Council can't solve this on their own: they need community support. Do you have ideas or suggestions which might help?

Masterton Council: Tail wagging the dog

A Masterton lobby group is calling the Mayor and Masterton District Councillors to account as discontent grows with Council decision-making and attitudes. Calling themselves the Pooh Pond Group, their advertising says - 

"We need to elect a council which will take control of the decision-making process again, and do so by employing officers and consultants, should they be needed, who take their instructions from our elected representatives."  

Serious doubts about the wastewater scheme methodology, which was passed by a close vote, and just before the election,  is the primary reason for formation of this group. 

Keen to see the Council in action for myself, I attended the August Council meeting. The meeting had the cosy air of a committee meeting in someone's living room, albeit with careful observation of formal meeting procedure.

At no stage were Council managers called to account for their actions. When Council managers were asked a question the answer was always delivered in a "leave this to us, we know what we're doing" manner that brooked no discussion.

Having worked as a manager for a large urban council, where appearing before the council was a truly terrifying experience, it appeared to me that Masterton Council management had it very easy.

Most of the meeting was mindnumbingly boring, as it plodded stolidly through committee report after committee report.

I was struck by the lack of vision, the lack of direction, the lack of passion, the sense that following the meeting agenda was the Most Important Thing, and the sense that they'd been doing exactly the same thing for the last 30 years.

The incoming Masterton Council needs to take hold of the reins, to set the vision and take some bold and entrepreneurial decisions. They need to look closely at the courage of the South Wairarapa District Council, who made some hard decisions about their future direction and staffing in line with what the community wanted. 

The Pooh Pond Group is holding a meeting in the Frank Cody Lounge, at the Masterton Town Hall, on Thursday, 23 September, where voters have an opportunity to listen to candidates' views and to ask questions. The meeting will be chaired by Rick Long and starts at 7.30 pm.

Masterton Council leaves landowners in dark over building restrictions

Landowners of 30 properties adjoining the new sewerage plant at Homebush have just learned that they will be unable to build on their properties within 300 metres of where the waste water will be dumped.

It appears that the 2008 District Plan extended the area owners were unable to build on from 150 to 300 metres, but no-one told the landowners.

Given the controversial nature of this project it seems strange that no-one thought to tell the owners.

The Council did notify some owners of other changes to the 2008 District Plan which might affect them, because I received a letter myself.

Was this then a deliberate act on the part of the Council not to inform property owners at Homebush (and possibly inflame the sewerage debate) or was it an oversight?  Either way, it reflects badly on the Council.

Irate landowners are threatening legal action which is likely to result in more cost to ratepayers (paying for the Council to defend the action) as well as delaying the new sewerage scheme.

 

Maps of the proposed Homebush sewerage scheme

Jeff Workman

Every now and again a bright star shines in the grey world of local government.  With the death of Jeff Workman, earlier this week, Masterton District Council has lost their star.

A man with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm, Jeff wasn't one to sit and wait for council officers to come up with the ideas.  He was brimming with plans for improving Masterton and was the driving force behind the Council's alcohol strategy.

He was a man of great integrity and courage, who never compromised his values in the name of politics. A great listener, he quietly went about gathering information from all points of view about an issue.

Jeff went further than most of us in making a difference in people's lives.  I'm sure he would have agreed with Bertrand Russell when he said:

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social.

Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times.

Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them.

Rubbish policy needs rethink

The Wairarapa News reports Masterton residents on low incomes are struggling with the increased cost of rubbish bags, retailing at between $13 and $15 for five bags.

The price increase was intended to encourage residents to recycle as much as possible to reduce the cost of shipping waste to the Bonnie Glen Landfill in Rangitikei.

MDC Finance Manager David Paris suggests residents finding the cost of five bags too much call at the Council offices and buy individual bags.

This is an unrealistic option for those with limited mobility and who live some distance from the centre of town.  A better option would be to sell them individually through dairies.

Masterton already has a problem with people dumping rubbish in places like riverbanks on the outskirts of the town. This is only going to make the problem worse.

Rubbish bag prices

There are some interesting differences in rubbish bag pricing across the three Wairarapa Councils:

Masterton	5 bags for $13-15	$2.70 each (available only from Council offices)
Carterton		$2.00 each (available supermarket and dairies)
South Wairarapa	10 bags for $8	80 cents each

Minimising rubbish

Carterton Council has some useful tips on waste minimisation and includes a helpful Composting for beginners fact sheet.

Having an experienced senior recycling person on hand at the weekend to sort through trailers of rubbish dumped at the Nursery Road transfer station might help reduce waste.  It is not practical for those with trailers to untie their load and remove recyclables at the recycling station, then retie the load and go up the hill to the transfer station, so the lot is dumped over the side.

The vexed issue of the Hosking Garden

The future of the Hosking Garden is worrying Masterton residents alarmed that the garden - Masterton's swimming pool from the early 1900s until the 1960s - may be demolished.

The concept plan  assumed demolition of the sunken garden and replacing it with an imprint - see 1B above.

If you look along the Dixon Street side of the promenade walk on the plan, the Sunken Garden imprint is flush with the edge of the walk, whereas the actual sunken garden is sticking out into this promenade area.

I think the council were a bit quick in moving on landscaping the adjoining area in line with the new plan.  The Hosking Garden now sticks out like a sore thumb into the promenade.

The entrance to the park - almost opposite Aratoi - has been realigned in accordance with the Richard Fowler plan which has made no attempt to connect the new lawns and gardens with the Hosking Garden.  Instead, the Hosking Garden has been left isolated and awkward looking.

If the Council votes to retain the Hosking Garden instead of the imprint, some rework of adjoining lawns, beds and pathways will be needed to ensure the garden is connected to the rest of the park.

And I'd like to see it planted more imaginatively in something other than the usual hectic plantings of annuals.

Di and Ian Grant highlight a further concern, writing in the Times-Age:

We do not believe the Council has the right to remove the sunken garden until it can tell citizens exactly what it will be replaced with and why this is demonstrably better than what we have now."

The only item on the Council website about the Queen Elizabeth Park makeover was the concept plan already noted above.

The Council has missed a great publicity opportunity with detailed plan on their website, and a scale model on display in the Aratoi foyer for anyone who wanted to have a look

It will be interesting to see which side prevails when the Council votes on the future of the Hosking Garden on Wednesday.

Plastic recycling nightmare

Plastic waste is a worldwide problem. I was shocked by the mountain of plastic at the Masterton Transfer Station, at Nursery Road.

Looking more closely at this mountain I could see a variety of different plastics all jumbled together. Milk containers, softdrink bottles, yoghurt containers (which are apparently not recycled according to the Council website) - all thrown into a huge heap.

This led me to two conclusions:

1. Transfer station staff are not trained to differentiate between different plastic types and are lumping them all together, or
2. There is no market for any of the plastics so they are being bundled up and dumped somewhere.

Having seen this heap I wondered why I'd bothered spending time separating recyclable plastics into the different bins if they were just going to end up together.

Time to charge the manufacturers

I think it is high time drink manufacturers were charged a hefty levy to cover the cost of recycling softdrink bottles.

As a nation we should be examining

• why so much softdrink is being consumed and
• why we are not using returnable glass bottles

Apparently softdrink is the top-selling supermarket item. This is creating a huge environmental problem and is already causing significant health problems that are going to cost the country dearly in years to come.

Health professionals tell me they regularly have to try and wean people off three two-litre softdrink bottles per day.

Masterton cafe rent debacle raises interesting confidentiality issues

Organisations which do business with Masterton District Council may think twice about doing so in future after the media circus surrounding rental charges for the cafe in Queen Elizabeth Park.

There are several issues which seem to have been overlooked in this debate.

• The Council is acting effectively as a commercial landlord in this situation
• It is common for commercial landlords of retail premises to grant rent holidays or reduce rent for a temporary period where one of their shops is struggling.
• The Council had a commercial valuation done first to correctly determine an appropriate rental
• Reduced rental is better than no rental at all and potentially empty premises
• Given the economic climate earlier this year and the general downturn in business for cafes, no-one in their right mind would have taken over the lease of the premises had the business folded.
• Given the isolated location of the cafe in the middle of the park, vandalism would have been highly likely if the cafe had closed down. This would have cost the Council considerably more than the small loss of income from reducing the rent.

If an organisation enters into a financial agreement with a council it is reasonable that details of such arrangement remain confidential. 

I find it very curious that the Wairarapa Times-Age frontpage story - Why did park cafe get a big rate cut - has not been loaded on their website.

I am equally curious as to how the Times-Age obtained a copy of the in-committee minute which covered this decision as it does not appear to have been obtained under provisions of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (LGOIMA)

It may be timely to note the terms of the Code of Conduct which Council members are obliged to sign when they take office:

In the course of their duties members will receive information that is confidential. This will generally be Council information that is either commercially sensitive or is personal to a particular individual or organisation. Members must not use or disclose confidential information for any purpose other than the purpose for which the information was supplied to the member. Any failure to observe these provisions may affect the Council's performance, by inhibiting information flows and undermining public confidence in the Council. Failure to observe these provisions may also expose the Council to prosecution under the Privacy Act 1993 or civil litigation, and may expose individual members to responsibility for loss under s.46 of the Local Government Act (2002).

Speed reductions may not reduce speed

I'm right behind Masterton District Council's moves to reduce speed on some rural roads.

Many of these roads are very narrow and were designed with the leisurely speeds of a 1950 Morris Minor in mind, on its weekly visit to town on a Friday.

While the majority of law-abiding motorists will comply with the new speed limits I don't think it's going to have the slightest impact on boy racers.  They know they're immortal so will continue to roar east down West Bush Road and come to grief - as so many already have - at the sharp righthand bend.

And if you've already got $20,000 of traffic fines, don't have a licence, or are already disqualified, another ticket is neither here nor there.

Dog and Lemon Guide Editor, Clive Matthew-Wilson, observes that middle class, law-abiding-citizen solutions don't work with boy racers.

I heard somewhere recently that the cars boy racers are driving today had the same power as earlier Formula One racing cars. These are cars which need maturity and experience to handle, but are in the hands of young people who may have only been driving for a very short time.

And can someone tell me why so many teenagers need to drive to school these days? 

New Masterton arts initiative

Getting art and music out in the community is a new initiative by Masterton Councillor Jeff Workman who wants to make Masterton a more interesting and vibrant place.

This initiative is being launched tonight at Cafe Cecille - from 5.30 to 7 pm - with an exhibition by Greytown artist Linda Dennes, combined with a free gig by Wairarapa Concert Youth Band. It is hoped this will be the first of a regular series of arts and culture events.

Mr Workman hopes to foster street art and other vibrant forms of art and encourage other organisations to stage art and music events.

Tonight's event:  Linda Dennes art exhibition, with Masterton Concert Youth Band, 5.30 - 7 pm, 1 September, Cafe Cecille, Queen Elizabeth Park, Masterton.

Other musical events this week in Masterton

Dr Ron Newton, organist, will be performing a Victorian Matinee at St Matthew's, Church Street, Masterton, Wednesday, 2 September at 2 pm, tickets $10, students free

Rami Bar-Niv, international concert pianist, will be performing at "The Landing", Landsdowne Park Village, 100 Titoki Street, also on Wednesday, 2 September at 7.30 pm, tickets $20.

Having two concerts by distinguished performers on the same day is a great pity and points to the need for coordination between groups providing musical events. There is an opportunity for Destination Wairarapa to help here.

Tararua blog

Tararua District Library has an excellent blog, with all sorts of interesting stuff about books, libraries and current events. Excellent reading (the blog, that is).

This week is also Library Week 2009 and libraries all over the country are putting on special events.

The Wairarapa Library Service has a number of Library Week events on its website.  Sorry, I couldn't find any events on the Masterton Library site.

Badly managed dogs continuing problem

News reports of horrific injuries to a Waikato woman who was set upon by eight pig dogs while jogging highlight a huge difficulty for local authorities.  Apparently none of the eight dogs involved in the attack was registered, although two older dogs on the property were registered.

All Councils have bylaws requiring dogs to be licensed and lay down various responsibilities for owners. Unfortunately there is a group of dog owners who consider themselves above the law. Their dogs are typically not registered and they are often there to provide "security" for the owners, meaning they are trained to be aggressive and/or are dogs which have a particularly aggressive disposition.  Most of these dogs are neither neutered nor spayed which means that the problem is perpetuated by endless litters of puppies.

The Masterton District Council is struggling with this issue according to a recent report in the  Times-Age.

Here's a couple of suggestions I'd put to the Council:

1. Ask neighbours to report seemingly dangerous dogs, or dogs they suspect may not be registered, to the Council. It would be a simple matter for Council staff to check their dog licensing database to see if dogs were registered at the property, and follow up with a visit if no registered dogs appeared on the database, or there were other concerns.   Ditto wandering dogs.
   
   Dog Control Officers can't be everywhere and won't necessarily be able to spot dogs hidden in the backyard.  A Dob in a Dog media campaign, repeated at regular intervals, might help spot some of these animals before they become serious problems.
   
   Use all possible remedies, within the law, to impound and destroy such animals and advertise these penalties widely.


2. Encourage dog owners to take their dogs to dog obedience classes by subsidising the cost of basic obedience training and/or providing an easily-accessed local venue to the obedience trainers, and reducing the registration cost for dogs which have a certificate from an approved obedience course. This might well help with dogs "rushing" people and attacking other dogs and make life much easier for the owner as well.

Masterton wastewater upgrade cost highlights funding difficulty

Masterton Mayor Garry Daniell has been lobbying Government for a sewerage subsidy to reduce the $21 million cost of the much-debated Homebush wastewater upgrade.

He highlights a real problem for local government in provincial New Zealand: the small number of ratepayers means a higher individual cost per ratepayer for any infrastructure initiative.

Household incomes are much smaller in Masterton than in a major urban centre and the population of Masterton is aging significantly. Those on superannuation do not have much spare discretionary income to spend on additional rates but the sewerage system needs fixing. Urgently.

Infrastructure spending is always a fraught area for local government. Much of it is unappealing and irrelevant to individual ratepayers - except for getting the Council to fix the stormwater problem in their street.  Councils large and small struggle with a trade-off between industry best practice, a vociferous few, and ratepayer indifference to consultation initiatives - until it hits them in the pocket.

Central and Regional Government has set higher and higher standards for territorial authorities to meet. Some councils have had real difficulty funding the cost of upgrades to meet the required standards for drinking (potable) water.

I hope Garry Daniell is successful in his submissions to Government over the Homebush upgrade. Failing that, perhaps every household in Masterton could install a composting loo - !

Improving Masterton recycling

GHD Consultants have prepared a seven-stage plan to reduce the amount of Masterton waste ending up in landfill, according to the Times-Age.

I looked in vain for this report on the Masterton District Council website as I'd be really interested in learning about the proposed initiatives, but couldn't find it.

In the meantime, I'd offer some suggestions for operational improvements at the Nursery Road site.

• Provide a covered area for people to put reusable household items.
  The area where people can leave reusable items -  from lounge suites to vacuum cleaners to microwaves - is out in the open. I have seen perfectly servicable appliances and lounge suites ruined by being left out in the rain.
  
  The wastage that goes on here is dreadful, particularly when Masterton has a quite a sizeable population group who are struggling financially.


• Develop the recycling area as a residents' recycle swap centre
  Admission to the recycling area could be by bringing recyclables with you, or paying a gold coin admission. Once there, residents could help themselves to whatever is on offer.


• Ensure Nursery Road staff are properly trained and supervised
  A friend recently took a used car battery to the Nursery Road transfer station and, knowing the environmental issues used batteries caused, asked where he should leave it. He was told to dump the battery over the side at the transfer station. He was horrified.
  
  Irrespective of any long-term environmental issues, the sulphuric acid in lead acid batteries such as car batteries can cause severe skin burns or irritation and must be handled in line with Ministry for the Environment guidelines.
  
  On my few visits to the transfer station - usually because I've missed the weekly rubbish collection - I always see large amounts of reusable items in the mound of rubbish awaiting transportation out of the district.
  
  Staff at the Nursery Road site seem to have a couldn't-care-less attitude to recycling and environmental safety issues. This points to poor training and inadequate supervision.


• Improve signage at recycling area
  Much of the signage in the plastics recycling area is damaged and hard to read. It would be helpful to have a list of the plastic types/numbers that the recycling centre does actually accept.

Operation Cover Up

Operation Cover Up is an initiative to provide warm woollen blankets and clothing for poor and orphaned children in Eastern Europe, including Moldava, Romania, and the Ukraine.

The "peggy square" pattern is very simple. Using No.8 (4mm) needles and double knitting wool, cast on 40 stitches, and knit 80 rows.  Eight squares joined end-to-end make a strip, or you can knit an entire strip (80 rows x 8).  Note that wool must be used, rather than a synthetic yarn, as synthetic yarns are simply not warm enough.

The Masterton District Library (06 370 6261) is a collection point for both completed squares, and for receiving donations of double knitting wool.

A great opportunity for Wairarapa knitters to get busy.

Foolish behaviour by Masterton Councillors

The Wairarapa Times-Age has a disturbing report about a formal complaint laid against Masterton District Councillor Brent Goodwin.

Aratoi director Marcus Boroughs has laid a formal complaint, accusing Mr Goodwin and other councillors Roddy McKenzie and Chris Peterson of intimidating the temporary female worker at a meeting at Café Strada.

Mr Boroughs said the girl had arranged to meet Mr McKenzie to talk about a temporary job on his Mauriceville farm and first assumed the other two men were farm workers.

Mr Goodwin has admitted he offered the worker free movie tickets in exchange for "accurate" visitor counts at Aratoi, and has also claimed full responsibility for the approach, stressing the other two councillors are innocent.

Irrespective of whether the formal complaint has any basis, it is never a good idea for councillors to meet junior staff members of an organisation which has a contract with the Council behind the back of that organisation's management.  Whatever the reason.

Councillors need to remind themselves of one of the key planks of their own Code of Conduct which states:

Honesty and Integrity - Members should not place themselves in situations where
their honesty and integrity may be questioned, should not behave improperly and
should on all occasions avoid the appearance of such behaviour.

According to the Code of Conduct, complaints are to be heard by the Conduct Review Committee. The results of their findings will be awaited with interest.

Frustrations of Queen Elizabeth Park, Masterton

A walk round Queen Elizabeth Park on a winter's day is not an entirely uplifting experience.

I have no particular views about the removal/retention of the sunken Hosking Garden, but the Council landscapers clearly regard its demise as a done deal. While the beds in the Hosking Garden are neatly planted with annuals, there is no pathway into the Garden. Stomping across a wet, muddy lawn is the only way into the Hosking Garden.

Building a new park entrance way, while providing an attractive entry point, has disconnected the Hosking Garden, so it has the appearance of being dumped on the edge of the park.

I do hope thinning out of the trees within Queen Elizabeth Park is high on the Masterton District Council's immediate priorities.  Trees - particularly dense, dark conifers - are jammed close together and urgently need work.  In fact there are probably enough trees to justify fulltime employment of an expert arborist.

The park has a distinctly neglected air about it.

Poppies provide a splash of brilliant colour on a bleak day. One of the new beds at the entrance to Queen Elizabeth Park, Masterton.

The Queen Elizabeth Park train, awaiting customers.

Newly repainted band rotunda, Queen Elizabeth Park.

Local government needs to improve governance information

The controversy over the Masterton Urban Wastewater Treatment upgrade has highlighted the need for Wairarapa Councils to provide more online information about governance and supporting reasons for decision-making. I noted Jeff Workman's desire to improve Council communication in an earlier post. 

While some Wairarapa councils have council and committee minutes available on their websites, these are simply a record of decisions, and do not provide any background of the discussion that led to a decision, nor the reports submitted by council officers to support the discussion.

I would like to be able to read online the same council officers' reports that councillors read so I can be informed as to the reasons a particular course of action is proposed.

What I'd like to see happen is:

• Agendas for all council meetings and committees posted on councils' websites at least a week ahead of a meeting
• All council officers' reports tabled at those meetings to be uploaded to the website at the same time
• All council and committee minutes uploaded when they are prepared. (These would need to include a note that they have yet to be approved.)  Carterton and South Wairarapa already post their agendas and minutes, but I was unable to find any on the Masterton website. 
• All information about a council committee - membership, agendas, minutes and reports - grouped together on the website.

This would give interested ratepayers - and the media - an opportunity read background information and to highlight more effectively issues that may well be of interest to the wider public. It would also allow searching on a particular topic.

At the moment council agendas and supporting papers are available at public libraries and, daunted by the amount of paper, I suspect few people read them.

There will always be a few "in committee" issues - where councillors need to have a full and frank discussion about an issue of particular sensitivity, or where there is commercially sensitive information - such as contract details between a supplier and a council.  These are the exception - the majority of council governance activities should be open and transparent.

The principle underpinning the Local Government Information Act 1987 is that all local government information is "discoverable" (ie, open to the public) unless there are compelling reasons, which are outlined in the Act, for their remaining secret.

Too many conifers

The debate over improvements to Queen Elizabeth Park waxes and wanes. In the rare, brilliant sunshine this afternoon there seemed to be too much shade, caused by too many over-large conifers, planted too closely together.

This makes large expanses of the Dixon Street side of the park very cold and gloomy at this time of the year.  Some more judicious chainsaw use seems necessary.

Ratepayer apathy challenged

The Wairarapa Times-Age reports Councillor Jeff Workman is on a mission to improve communication between the Masterton District Council and ratepayers.

This is a real challenge.  As a former staff member for a metropolitan local authority I understand his frustration.  Local authorities spend a small fortune telling their ratepayers what they're planning to do (consultation) and seeking feedback.  And getting almost none.

Much of the essential work of a local authority is around infrastructure; boring, uninteresting things like replacing sewers, sealing roads. Even putting in a new sewage treatment facility.  

Residents may grizzle when their rates rise to cover the cost of some essential infrastructure service, but few put pen to paper, or attend public meetings.  

The Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) is an expensive and time-consuming exercise local authorities must undertake to ensure that they are thinking and planning ahead in a way that will meet present and future needs of their community.  It is my experience that it is terribly difficult to interest the public, despite a council's best efforts.

People will react much more strongly to something where there is an emotional attachment.  The saga of the Greytown Town Hall, where locals fought tooth and nail to retain the building as a town hall - even though it was so run down that it was only used a couple of times a year, is a case in point.

The Masterton District Council website is worthy, but boring. A branding exercise for Masterton District Council, with new logo and style guide - and a makeover for the website - would help.  Carterton District Council is leading the way here with a smart logo and impressive, modern website.