Wellington Scoop / August 2010
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Serepisos – the name that won’t go away
- Wellington Scoop
- The Terry Serepisos name re-appeared today as an election issue – this time for the mayor of Hutt City who seems to have said too much about the property developer’s overdue rates. But in Wellington, since Mayor Kerry Prendergast’s meetings with the Serepisos-owned Phoenix football team to discuss its request for financial support from ratepayers, the city council has tried to make the Serepisos name go away, by saying nothing at all.
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A second Mt Victoria tunnel in ten years – yes, no, maybe?
- Wellington Scoop
- Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast took everyone by surprise this week by enabling a headline which stated uncategorically: Green light for second Mt Vic Tunnel. The headline is in The Wellingtonian, above a report written by Rebecca Thompson. But there’s no evidence of a green light, or even an orange one.
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Mt. Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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For sale: a home of the little blue penguins
- Wellington Scoop
- Consistency must count for something in Mayor Kerry Prendergast’s strategy, but it was conspicuous by its absence in a 24-hour period this week. On Tuesday, she honoured Forest & Bird and their project to save little blue penguins. One day later came her action to remove from city ownership and protection a piece of land that is a home for some of those same little penguins.
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Election issues: bigger and briefer
- Wellington Scoop
- This is the first Wellington election billboard that I’ve seen since nominations closed. It’s above the empty space at the back of Reading Cinemas, facing five lanes of northbound traffic on Wakefield Street.
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Threat to Johnsonville property values? Planning changes become election issue
- Wellington Scoop
- The Johnsonville Progressive Association has today been describing a basic fear of property owners whose savings are in their houses. The association says that Johnsonville residents are upset by the Wellington City Council’s District Plan Change 72, which councilors will be voting on tomorrow. It fears that the changes will push their suburb down the socio-economic ladder. And if Johnsonville goes down, down with it will go the value of the houses.
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First the nominations, and now the issues
- Wellington Scoop
- Now that the nominations for the October elections have been received, it’s time to consider the issues, and whether candidates are identifying themselves with any of the topics which are concerning the voters.
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What to do with parking fines?
- Wellington Scoop
- After claims that Wellington parking wardens were given ipods and overseas trips to encourage revenue gathering, the Wellington City Council put an end to the speculation – there was just one ipod, and one overseas trip. Both prizes were gifted in a warden’s competition which had nothing to do with how much revenue they’d collected. Fair enough, too. Many employees are offered rewards for a whole range of reasons. But public perception is hard to shake. So, what should the council do? Here’s an idea that’s guaranteed to please everybody. Well, nearly everybody.
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Why councils should be more responsible about resource consents
- Wellington Scoop
- The Wellington City Council seems to have found a very effective way of processing applications within a short time-frame – accept the application as it comes over the counter and approve it without notification. How simple is that?
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Communication, non-communication
- Wellington Scoop
- Fifteen days ago we reported that the Wellington City Council had breached its design brief for the waterfront. Because this was a serious allegation, I referred it to the council and invited a response. Perhaps, I thought, the council might admit it had made a mistake. But since then: silence. The lack of response seems to be a sort of guilty plea from the council, which is usually quick to speak out in its own defence.
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The knight and the mayor – the city elections start to become more interesting
- Wellington Scoop
- The Wellington election campaign just got a lot more interesting, with a report of a business leader shouting at the mayor during a press conference called to announce that Vibrant Wellington would not be nominating any candidates. It’s a complicated story.
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The Wellington mayoral election: how 17 per cent became a mandate
- Wellington Scoop
- If the first preferences of voters in the 2007 Wellington mayoral election could be illustrated, the photo would be a stampede away from Mayor Prendergast – 65 per cent for all other candidates to 35 per cent for the mayor. The numbers: 33,418 for the others, 17,910 for the mayor. The see-saw was firmly tilted away from her.
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Changing the city landscape: Celia Wade-Brown focuses on the mayoralty
- Wellington Scoop
- Meeting places speak volumes. A fair trade clothing sale at Zeal is where mayoral candidate Celia Wade-Brown is scheduled to be on a Monday afternoon, and so that is where we meet her, to hear her plans for a greener and more sustainable Wellington.
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“I think I’m in the running” says Bryan Pepperell
- Wellington Scoop
- Wellington is at a crossroads, with important decisions looming about the future of the city, says Wellington city councillor and mayoral candidate Bryan Pepperell. He lists Wellington’s pressing problems as council debt, energy and transport provision, and protecting the city’s natural and built heritage. We visited Councillor Pepperell at his home and asked him about his policies, his aspirations and his opinion of his fellow mayoral candidates.
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Andy Foster ‘probably’ not running for mayor: ‘race between Kerry and Celia’
- Wellington Scoop
- Councillor Andy Foster has all but ruled out running for mayor in the upcoming local body elections. But as a long-term Wellington city councillor, he said he would consider running for mayor in the future and it was a job he could do well. And he did have a clear opinion on how this year’s candidates were shaping up: “I think it’s going to be a race between Kerry and Celia and we’ll see how it goes.
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Why Wellington needs light rail, and why we can afford it
- Wellington Scoop
- One of the biggest daily problems facing Wellingtonians is transport – the simple act of getting from A to B, especially at peak times. In some areas even quiet weekends can be difficult. Yet the current mayor and councillors seem to have little idea of the extent of the problem, let alone how to fix it.
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Dividing Kapiti in two: “it’s madness”
- Wellington Scoop
- This is part of the new $500million expressway which Kapiti Coast residents are concerned will slice through the heart of their district, dividing east from west. The four-lane expressway is being planned by the New Zealand Transport Authority, but the image – showing four lanes cutting through a residential area of Paraparaumu Beach – wasn’t seen till campaigners obtained it by using the Official Information Act.
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