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December 2021
Retaining community boards is great news BY FRANK NEILL Ōtaki community leaders have welcomed Kāpiti Coast District Council’s decision to retain community boards. In its original proposal, presented for community input, the council proposed abolishing the district’s four community boards. The council received 510 submissions from individuals and 22 submissions from organisations. The vast majority disagreed with the proposal to abolish community boards. After considering the submissions, the council decided at its meeting on 11 November not only to retain community boards, but to move from having four to having five community boards as from the 2022 election. The five community boards will be Ōtaki, Waikanae, Paraparaumu, Raumati and Paekākāriki. The new community board will serve Raumati. The decision to retain community boards “is a really positive outcome”, Ōtaki College Principal Andy Fraser told the Ōtaki Mail. “I’m just pleased that they [the council] have taken into consideration the submissions they received. “Hopefully moving forward there will be a desire to strengthen community boards to allow a greater say about what’s happening in our towns,” Mr Fraser said. “I think it is a good decision,” said Di Buchan, who chairs the Friends of the Ōtaki Rotunda Trust and is also a member of the Ōtaki Museum Board. “It is a good thing the council put this up in some ways, because it has made us think about what community boards are doing. “What the council and the community boards need to do now is to work to make the community boards more useful and to serve our communities better than they have been,” Ms Buchan said. The council’s decision to retain community boards is “a good outcome and a sensible one in my opinion,” Ōtaki RSA President Mike Forgarty said. “Personally I am very pleased that the community boards are staying. “Council has listened to the constituents and common sense has prevailed.
“It would have been a contentious issue if they had gone ahead and thought they could have had a reduction in the community boards.” Having community boards has an impact on local communities, especially places like Ōtaki, Mr Fogarty noted. For example when Ōtaki people or organisations applied for a grant they would have to travel to Paraparaumu if there was no Ōtaki Community Board. For the RSA “these grants help with the likes of ANZAC Day, both here and in Waikanae.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ōtaki Community Board Chair, Christine Papps, has also welcomed the decision. “We are ecstatic about it,” she said. “It was democracy in action. The people have spoken and they were listened to.” Ms Papps attended the council meeting on 11 November where it made the decision to retain the four community boards and add a fifth one.
The decision on community board was unanimous, she noted. “We did not see how it could have gone any other way when you see the submissions people put in. “It went the way people wanted, and it shows that if people get behind what they want, it does work. “So we have gone from four community boards to no community boards to five community boards,” she said. Councillors were “pleased with the high level of interest in the consultation on the district’s democratic system,” Mayor Gurunathan said. The councillors took the community feedback on board and made “significant changes” to the initial proposal so the situation was “something close to the status quo”.
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Armistice Page 12
The top award winners at Ōtaki College’s prizegiving on 18 November (from left): Proxime Accessit Quinn Straker, Sportsperson of the Year Heremaia Cooper and Dux Krisha Modi.
Te Horo Cider Page 16
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Sports Pages 18–19, 28