Letter to the Editor

 

Who has lost their way?
Mr Robertson, your regular contributor, has excelled himself in your August 10 issue.

He now has intimate knowledge of the workings of a community organisation with which he refuses to communicate, and he has announced that the MRRA has lost its way.

In 2013 the MRRA asked the High Court to investigate the validity of many rates set by council between 2005 and 2012. In its ruling, the court stated that if the council had not breached the civil rights of the applicants by progressing a Local Bill (the Validation Act) the MRRA would have been completely successful.

We did not, and still do not, believe that our approach to the court should have been strangled in the way it was by Mr Robertson, and our appeal to the court seeks to clarify this. We may not succeed, but if there is any justice in the system at all, we will not be thrown out empty-handed.

We suggested to Mr Robertson that everyone would pay their rates arrears as long as he forgave the penalties, which should never have been applied. We offered all the money, in cheques (over a million dollars). He threw it back in our faces.

We suggested that taking any further action should wait until the court of appeal had heard the matter. He rejected that and sued those of us who have not paid rates, pending resolution of the High Court appeal.

Heather and I volunteered to be the test case, and the court agreed to that.

Robertson has been sending out incorrect non-compliant rates demands ever since he took office. If people meekly pay up he does not have a problem, because he takes the view that anything he does is OK unless a court says it isn’t (that is why he hates being taken to court). He has gone to the District Court to screw rates arrears out of me and Heather and many others using as proof of his claim documents that are ridiculously non-compliant with the law.

Outside the court he told me that it was only human to make mistakes, and surely, when I was on council myself, I must have made some mistakes? I replied that I might well have, but one very big mistake that I never made was to support the insane piece of grand larceny that the Mangawhai sewerage scheme became.

His own counsel admitted to the District Court all the defects in the rates documents, and said in response that it was nit-picking of ratepayers to draw attention to them.

The Validation Act contains pages and pages of clauses that ‘fix’ exactly such ‘nit-picking’ points. Why? Because the lawyers advising KDC knew perfectly well that a court would not allow those defects to stand. What we did at the District Court was show the court some of the huge number of illegalities and defects in the documentation, that were not fixed by validation, that KDC and NRC have been relying on to demand rates. As I said before, if people just cough up the council has not a care in the world, but if councils head off to court relying on defective documents they risk getting treated as they deserve.

As to the new application to the High Court, KDC instructed us to do that. Their lawyer, David Neutze, told the District Court that our questioning of the correctness of the documentation was tantamount to a challenge to the validity of the rates, and ‘Section 60’ prohibited such challenges in the District Court. We do not believe that we were challenging the validity of the rates at all, and we said so, but just in case Neutze’s view was accepted by the District Court, we protected our position by asking the High Court to look at it too.

We did not challenge the validity of the rates (in the District Court) because we actually knew they were all totally invalid all along. That was never the point. The point was whether the councils (KDC and NRC) could rely on inaccurate illegally constructed rates demands to screw rates out of ratepayers. We’ll all find out soon, and we will learn who has lost their way and who hasn’t.

Bruce Rogan
MRRA chair


No future for Marsden City
Marsden City is a very contentious issue here in Ruakaka. Those of us, including myself and Steve Goldthorpe who, as a result of our academic studies understand why this was an ill-conceived project, tried unsuccessfully to warn the Whangarei District Council about the physical unsuitability of the then proposed development.

I don’t know how this subject should be handled but I do not think the ‘letters to the editor’ format will achieve much. Just as Kaipara District Councillors have much to answer for, so the Whangarei District Councillors have much to answer for, for undemocratically imposing upon us the Ruakaka Structure Plan that included the Marsden City site.

We were denied the opportunity, unlike all other districts, to submit on our local plan. Instead the work was given to developer Oliver Scott and look where that has got us!

It is not just Marsden City that is a fiasco. The entire Ruakaka Structure Plan needs to be binned and a fresh start made. Ignoring the physical constraints of an area is no way to understand successful development.

Marsden City does not suffer from growing pains because it should never have been developed in the first place. Detailed testing proving the area was once under the sea should have been evidence enough of future instability and corrosive activity from salt intrusions.

Already the Marsden access to State Highway 1 has, on occasions, been cut off by flooding from the tidal Ruakaka River since 2011. This is predicted to become a regular occurrence as early as 2050.

Marsden City does not have a viable long-term future. Any prospective buyer should study the reports of Professor Bruce Glavovic, one of New Zealand’s foremost coastal planning experts who has warned coastal land should remain undeveloped.

Marsden City is the epitome of arrogance and greed – a surefire recipe for failure. Considering it was undemocratically imposed on the Ruakaka community the Whangarei District Council has much to answer for.

Margaret Hicks
Ruakaka

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