Councillor leaves board meeting after heated debate
Tensions over CEO’s letters
Cr Stuart Borlase walked out of the Golden Bay Community Board’s monthly board meeting on Tuesday, following a heated debate.
Ongoing tensions between the board and Tasman District Council CEO Paul Wylie were at the heart of the conflict. The board has been endeavouring to find out the basis of charges for Mr Wylie’s time since late last year. Mr Wylie wrote two letters replying to earlier requests. Those letters were received at Tuesday’s meeting. The board spent 90 minutes discussing how to proceed.
During the debate, Cr Borlase left the meeting abruptly after an exchange of views in which he suggested that the current board’s usefulness was diminished by the extent to which it had become bogged down in its wrangling with Mr Wylie. Earlier in the debate he had proposed that the board simply acknowledge receipt of Mr Wylie’s letters and move on, without prolonging the dispute. Board chair Joe Bell expressed his determination to continue seeking the truth.
Mr Bell drew Cr Borlase’s attention to the board’s submission to the Te Waikoropupu Springs management plan as an example of the board’s community advocacy role. “Virtually all of the board’s submissions were adopted,” he said.
Eventually the board resolved to acknowledge receipt of Mr Wylie’s letters, note their disagreement with their contents but to take no further action.
“We should move on, in the interest of building working relationships,” said Mr Bell.
The board has arranged to meet informally with Mayor Kempthorne and Deputy Mayor Tim King at their earliest convenience.
Other business
Heritage Trust. Tasman Bays Heritage Trust manages and operates the Nelson Provincial Museum on its two sites, Isel Park in Stoke, and Town Acre 445 in Trafalgar Street in Nelson. The trust is a non-profit, council-controlled organisation jointly overseen by the Nelson City Council (NCC) and the Tasman District Council (TDC). The two councils provide about 80 oer cent of the trust’s total operational expenditure.
Trust chair and Collingwood resident Sara Chapman explained that the memorandum of understanding among the two councils and the trust expires at the end of June 2009. She was concerned that TDC’s funding might shift from bulk funding to tagged funding, and that no funding at all shows in the draft Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) between 2010 and 2019. She explained that a new storage facility for the region’s taonga/treasures had been “a joint councils’ proposal for the museum”.
“The provincial museum is not divisible along service, facility or boundary lines. It is a regional service that is available to all the people of the Nelson and Tasman districts and to all the visitors to both districts.”
Ms Chapman urged the board and the community to include a line in their submissions to the draft LTCCP asking that TDC bulk fund the Nelson Provincial Museum at parity with the NCC from 2009-2019.
Mountain biking. Mark Godden spoke on behalf of the Golden Bay Mountain Bike Club, seeking support for future funding applications.
“The club, the community and DOC have done a lot of work on a mountain bike track up at Canaan.
“It’s a long, slow process,” said Mr Godden. “Some funding could help us obtain the use of a locally available small digger and its skilled operator to upgrade the facility at a greater rate.”
Mr Godden said that members of the mountain bike club have also been doing voluntary work at the BMX track and potential community reserve at the end of Reilly Road.
“You can often see BMXers and kids on mountain bikes at the skate park and that’s not appropriate,” said Mr Godden. “The site at Reilly Road has been a wasteland and informal dump for years. The whole area could be developed and it would become a great community asset. The work is ongoing and now we need some support from council in terms of time and resources. Young people will benefit most from this early introduction to cycling.”
TDC community services manager, Lloyd Kennedy, explained that council has supported community volunteer work at cycle tracks in Mapua, Brightwater and Murchison.
“The board could include this request in its submissions to the draft plan and the club could submit on its own behalf, too. Council will need to know how much they’re after,” said Mr Kennedy.
Mayor Richard Kempthorne responded: “Enhanced cycling opportunities within our district sounds like a better spend than the Government’s North Cape-to-the-Bluff idea. Having the mountain bike club involved is a tremendous thing.”
The board resolved to congratulate the club on its work on the tracks at Canaan and Reilly Road and to write letters in support on a case-by-case basis. The board will also include support for the projects in its submission to the LTCCP.
General business
Other matters that arose in public forum, through correspondence to the board and from the board chair’s report, included broadband access in Golden Bay, changes to the Collingwood boat ramp and the land around it, and the future of Labyrinth Rocks Park.
Annual conference
Mr Bell was congratulated on the quality of his report from the Community Board’s Association’s Annual Conference in Christchurch.
Mr Bell said: “It’s a shame to go off to the conference and be fully inspired and refreshed, and then come back into the maelstrom of relationships that aren’t working as well as they might. I was interested to hear of places, like Central Otago, where the relationships are so good that half the rates budgets are administered by community boards. We were addressed by Prime Minister John Key and the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide. Mr Key said “All politics are local.” Mr Hide said “Keep the decision-making as close to the individual as possible.”
Neil Wilson
