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i-SITE closure a done deal BY SUE NEWMAN
SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
IN TODAY’S GUARDIAN Ashburton App
THE
THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
A five hundred person-strong rally and the signatures of another 1500 were not enough to persuade Ashburton’s mayor and district councillors to take a second look at the closure of the Ashburton iSITE. Neither were the feelings of those 2000 plus residents enough to raise a single hand of support at yesterday’s Ashburton District Council meeting. On the agenda was a recommendation that a petition presented by Karen McIntyre at the last council meeting should be received and the concerns raised acknowledged. It was.
There was no debate and councillors moved on to the next agenda item. Later in the meeting Experience Mid Canterbury general manager Bruce Moffat presented his six-monthly report to the council. Included were comments on the process his board went through before officially closing Ashburton’s i-SITE on Wednesday. It has been replaced by a transport booking service offered by House of Travel and by an unmanned information kiosk in the Ashburton Library. “This hasn’t been without its challenges,” Moffat said. Door counter figures for the i-SITE showed that numbers had “literally
Ashburton at your fingertips
crashed” over the past year, he said. “It hasn’t come over the past couple of months, it’s been coming for a long time.” In spite of community angst over the closure, Moffat said no-one had approached him to talk about the closures; no-one had asked what they could do to stop it. Mayor Donna Favel attended yesterday’s East Street rally and told her councillors there were “some views expressed” on the closure.
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