On Thursday 16 March, the Howick Local Board held our second business meeting for the year. Here’s a summary of some of the key discussions and outcomes.
We accepted apologies from Member Bruce Kendall who was away on leave and Councillors Sharon Stewart and Maurice Williamson due to their attendance at a meeting of the council’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
We had two deputations and three public forum items, starting with Annette Smart from East Auckland Tourism providing an update on their recent efforts to boost tourism to our area. They've been busy at recent events and have more planned, including a competition to capture what locals love about East Auckland.
We heard from Louise Boswell and Megan Douglas of the Pakuranga-Eastern Manukau Citizens Advice Bureau on their amazing work in our community. They spoke about the additional work that they had been doing in the aftermath of the flooding as well as their continued efforts to educate, inform and support locals in navigating the bureaucracies of local and central government.
Katie Treneman and Paul Spiller spoke about the recent activities of the Howick Village Association, including their Christmas event, Cultural Food festival and collection for flood impacted families which had all been very successful.
Ruth White of Business East Tamaki outlined a plan and scope for the proposed East Auckland Business Awards, including some potential costs and funding options. They’d been talking to the Howick Village Association about working together to ensure we covered all of the Howick Local Board area.
Former Howick Local Board member Jim Donald spoke to us about the Howick War Memorial Hall (also known as the Howick Information Centre), reminding the Board to ensure the resolution of the future management of the facility remained a priority. He also asked the Board to ensure the historic naval rig flagpole from the former Howick Borough Council in Moore Street was not forgotten. This is currently in storage and planned to be installed into Stevenson Reserve in the coming year.
Sometimes the Board needs to make decisions outside of the business meetings to meet urgent deadlines – the authority to do make these Urgent Decisions is delegated to the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson. To ensure that these decisions are formally noted and made part of the public record, they come to a business meeting to be noted. This month we had two items to note – our feedback on Auckland Council’s submission on the Inquiry into the 2022 Local Elections and also an Urgent Decision to grant funds to the Pakuranga Tennis Club Incorporated in late 2022.
The Eastern Busway is progressing and the project is preparing to deliver the second stage which includes the work around the Pakuranga Plaza including the new Reeves Road Flyover. Because the use of the land is changing and there will be significant construction, the project had logged a Notice of Requirement and the Howick Local Board was asked for our feedback. Unfortunately, members had not had a chance to consider the item, so we deferred it. This is one of the rare examples where we cannot provide feedback via an urgent decision. After the meeting we discovered that the deadline was 30 March, so I called an extraordinary meeting to provide the feedback (minutes and recording to follow separately).
We approved a new public road name at 2 Elevation Street, Flat Bush - Sagitta Drive.
We also approved an alteration to our meeting schedule swapping our workshop and business meetings in June. This means our business meeting is now on the 22 June 2023 to allow us time to prepare the Local Board agreement before the end of June.
I presented my chairpersons report for March, which noted the beginning of our Local Board Plan and Annual Budget engagement. These take a lot of time and effort by staff and members, but they have been extremely worthwhile. We’re being asked to reduce our spending by $1.1M which will effectively halve our discretionary spend – the impact on the community, especially when combined with the proposed regional cuts, is very concerning.
From this month, I’ve started including all events attended by Local Board members in their capacity as elected representatives to reflect the wider engagement we are striving to achieve. Each event or meeting has noted next to it who attended.
And then finally we had a confidential item that required us to exclude the public. While our Board meetings are public, on the rare occasion like this there are items that are sensitive often due to commercial information. There is a very high bar for this, and we only use it when completely necessary. Obviously, I can’t report on our discussions in this section until such time as the justification no longer applies.
The meeting closed an hour later.
Minutes of the meeting are available here, along with related attachments: https://infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/RedirectToDoc.aspx?URL=Open/2023/03/20230316_HW_MIN_11567_WEB.htm
And a recording of the meeting is available here: https://youtu.be/MWspnO0nwaQ
Our next Business Meeting is scheduled for Thursday 20 April at 12noon at the Pakuranga Library building in Aylesbury Street. These are open to the public to attend and observe, although you need to request a slot if you would like to speak (so we can make sure we provide time).