Letters to the Editor

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Sad and cynical
Thank you for all your feedback on this issue, and for Beverley Revell's letter (Letters to the editor, January 11). I would also add that Wood Street is now far from being pedestrian friendly. One example is the footpath leading to the Four Square. In the car park, cars often park too close to the footpath, and cars parallel parked on the road alongside can be a hazard when the passenger door opens suddenly half way across the footpath. I was fortunate enough to be a few feet back from by being collected by a door suddenly opening this way.

On the opposite side it is now too dangerous to walk on the regular footpath behind the cars parked there in front of the liquor and fishing shops, and there are no berms leading up to and around the corner into Molesworth Drive where one can jump to safety in order to dodge young cyclists and scooter riders.

Much of your reported feedback shows that people who made submissions to the Council feel that they were not listened to. My very sad and cynical observation is this, based on my past experience in the health system. Official bodies go through an obligatory 'consultation process' only in order to fulfil their obligations and say "we have consulted”. They are then free to implement their own plans and agendas. Could this be another such example?

Kay Baragwanath
Mangawhai Heads

 

Terrible layout
I believe the Wood Street layout has been terrible and stressful on a number of levels.

The council are kidding themselves if they think that the roading layout at Wood Street has been a success. It is a disaster and created congestion, frustration and headaches.

I have managed large scale events which require traffic management systems to manage the flow of tens of thousands of people, so I can speak with experience. I am at a loss to see how they have spent thousands of dollars on this layout and had a poor return on their investment.

The roading should be there to enhance social interaction and safety. It does quite the opposite by creating more traffic, blind spots and driver frustration. I have seen so many near-misses with cars almost crashing into each other, driver and passenger doors being opened onto one another, unsafe crossing of pedestrians on the road. This is an example of poor traffic design and needs a complete rethink.

The economic impact will also affect the shops there and I believe businesses would have suffered as a result of people NOT wanting to drive down Wood St. I believe the previous year in 2019/20 they got most of it correct and it needed slight tweaking. But the 2020/21 layout is a disaster.

This example of poor council management almost makes me want to run for Council to get simple things like this right. I am happy if you send my feedback with others to Council to show them they have got it wrong on this roading layout at Wood Street. I have heard that they believe it is ok, which is incredulous.

Renata Blair
Mangawhai

 

Kaipra District Council responds:

Over the holidays I had the pleasure of spending time with my family on Wood Street enjoying a meal and getting a feel for how things were working out. It was great to see people enjoying the area, finding plenty of spaces to park, and keeping our businesses busy.

Most importantly it is a much safer environment for what is an incredibly busy area with kids, people on bikes, mobility scooters, cars and delivery trucks. Creating safe places for people requires vehicles slowing down and drivers becoming more aware of their surroundings, actions and others sharing the space. We understand that this requires a change in behaviour and habit and will take time to settle, as it did last year. Sometimes this can look chaotic – and we’ve all spent time letting people know they’re going the ‘wrong way’! The design has been monitored, evaluated, and approved by safety inspectors, traffic engineers, and Waka Kotahi NZTA, before and after it was implemented.

This project is one which was encouraged by the Mangawhai Business Association and co-designed and built with the community. The interim design in place has been arrived at following multiple community workshops and with feedback from the successful one way trial that was implemented the previous summer. I’d also like to recognise the work of the Mangawhai Shed, Aaron McConchie, and Mangawhai Artists Incorporated who have created a really great environment through the street art and seating. I know there is still more work to be done to complete this, but you’ve created something really unique that we can be proud of and created a place that has a real ambience to it.

This summer we had massive numbers of visitors and residents spending time in Mangawhai, and without the Wood Street project it’s unlikely we would have been able to accommodate people safely in this area. The demolition of the fire station and access to increased parking meant that traffic kept moving – slowly as intended – and were able to find an off-street parking spot which is essential for our businesses to thrive. Cars driving down Wood Street don’t spend money – it’s the people that get out of them that do.

We also got record numbers for the Mangawhai Village to Beach Loop Free Bus Service, with already twice the numbers we got last year. Leabourn are a real community-focused outfit and they did a wonderful job getting the service up and running, and continuing to improve things to make it better.

And continuously improving the place is what a trial is about. Since the Wood Street interim design was implemented in December, there have been some strong responses from the community, and we welcome feedback via mangawhaicommunityplan@kaipara.govt.nz. Feedback is most helpful when it is specific as it gives us something to work on. As part of the project process, we have made or are about to make, some iterative changes to the central area, based on early onsite monitoring and the feedback we have received from Wood Street users and businesses. We are also taking action now, ahead of the February evaluation, based on feedback received from the public and businesses about the entrance, and improving parking reconfiguration and visibility in this area.

The team at Council is just one part of the wider community. The people in our team live and work in Mangawhai, and I’m proud of the work they’ve done – particularly to get 90 per cent of the project funded through Waka Kotahi NZTA. We are here to help bring projects to life working alongside the

community and over the next few months we look forward to the community driving some of the activations for the shared space areas such as a twilight market, buskers, and street games.

Jim Sephton
General Manager Infrastructure Services
Kaipara District Council

 

Maori Wards discriminate
The Northland Regional Council, Whangarei District Council and Kaipara District Council have voted to introduce Maori Wards.

Clear-thinking people in Northland should be able to see the proposal for what it is, and shows up councillors who are short on ability and stumbling into a racist, paternalistic option with a faulty and misguided view of legislative requirements. This thinking has no place in our egalitarian society. The three Northland council’s obsession with granting special privileges to one section of the community over all others is divisive and it is insulting to all Maori suggesting they are incapable of achieving without patronage.

We now see the Minister for Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta, wants to remove provisions allowing petitioners who called for public referendums to establish Maori Wards. Mahuta seems to think that freedom of speech and democracy are not good for our communities.

Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, and other tyrants would agree with Mahuta and how successfully they destroyed their people and countries. New Zealanders want one set of rules for everyone regardless of who our ancestors were.

It looks that our country’s commitment to democracy and citizen equality has now become a charade.

Mike Lally
Te Puke

 

MHRS propaganda
I can sit quietly and say nothing about what happened to our harbour many years ago, or I can give my account. After all, I was there, I saw it, I have lived in Mangawhai Heads for 35 years.

The second entrance opened up during a cyclone and with reduced flow out of both entrances, the northern one eventually silted over. I remember walking across sandy flats from Picnic Bay to the sandspit. As I stood in the middle of (what is now) the

channel, clean white sand was everywhere. On outgoing tides, water raced out the new southern entrance, and with wild frantic turmoil surf broke across the entrance. I caught some huge fish by surfcasting into this new channel whilst standing on the sandspit.

Boaties were not happy though. Many boats flipped in the surf as they tried to get out and bigger boats tied up in the estuary were trapped with no sheltered passage to the sea, no rock groyne to protect them from the surf.

So a handful of boaties, many of whom were farmers with tractors, decided to change all this, restore the protected northern entrance, and close the southern one. Later they would call themselves the Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society (MHRS).

It was NOT ‘the people of Mangawhai saving the Mangawhai Harbour’. There WAS NO ‘foul smelling unhealthy environment...’. Picnic Bay WAS NOT ‘a toxic polluted, environmental wasteland’. It was just sand. There was still the same amount of water flowing in and out, just in a different place. If MHRS have ‘created marine and bird life habitats that are so treasured today’, please explain!

I do know that whilst dredging the harbour, off North Avenue, MHRS chewed through, sucked up, and destroyed millions of living pipis on the estuary floor, and dumped them on the sandspit, where they died and remain to this day. And several years ago, whilst dredging beside the pontoon and campground, they chewed through a clay seam on the sea floor which turned the entire estuary bright orange so that fairy tern flying overhead searching for food for their chicks repeatedly dived but came up with nothing. A sad sight to see. It was this incident that prompted the Northland Regional Council to limit their dredging to the winter months.

When MHRS removed mangroves (near Hideaway camp) they destroyed the nest sites of hundreds of starlings. Is this ‘creating birdlife habitats’? Removing mangroves destroys habitats of millions of invertebrates that play a role in the food webs of our harbour. And sand dune planting over many years has not helped birdlife that lives on the sandspit, it increases cover for predators. Fairy tern actively avoid planted areas and DOC wardens remove vegetation from around their nest sites.

We are fed so much rubbish propaganda surrounding MHRS. Let's be honest, they are mostly boat owners who want to dredge the waterways to keep them open for boating activities, namely getting in and out of the harbour. And many people, who prefer sea views, rather than looking at mangroves, support them too.

Let's not pretend they have an unblemished environmental record.

Christine Silvester
Mangawhai Heads

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