Letters to the Editor

 

Road closures rile
I read in the August 3 Focus that KDC might close Mangawhai Road, Insley and Cove Roads for 4.5 hours on Thursday October 15 for the Targa Rally NZ.

The public can object by contacting KDC before 17 August. I have, but I wonder how many others have seen this public notice?

Access to and from Mangawhai Beach School and the kindergarten will be closed. The route into and out of Mangawhai along Insley Street will be closed, also access to and from private homes.

Access to and from Waipu, along Cove Road, will be closed. People that use any part of Cove Road to access their properties, will be either locked in or locked out for 4 or 5 hours that day.

These closures are not essential, they are for a rally, so have your say, there still is time to object.

Christine Silvester
Mangawhai

Misleading press releases
I am anxious not to burden your readers with more mud-slinging on the topic of Kaipara Council and its hugely mismanaged Mangawhai sewage project, but recently a press release by the council appeared in your paper [20 July edition, Rates defence cost $1.7m says council] and it made several assertions about the way my wife and I have conducted ourselves, and these assertions were untrue and arguably defamatory.

It was asserted that we had brought six separate legal actions against the council. We, the Rogans, never brought any action against the council. So the press release is either a deliberate lie or it is a result of a gross misunderstanding. We and the MRRA brought proceedings seeking judicial review of some council decisions.

In 2013 the MRRA (NOT us) brought an action for judicial review challenging six years of illegal rates and other irregularities. The upshot was the Validation Act which retrospectively validated those illegalities, destroying our case. The High Court Judge said exactly that.

We then offered to pay all the validated rates (without added penalties). A condition of passage of the validation Act was an agreement by the council that it would not penalise the whistleblowers. The council in the form of the chair of commissioners (Robertson) welched on that undertaking. The council refused to accept the money offered and sued us and over 100 others to recover the unpaid amounts.

We agreed to be a test case to save the council and its ratepayers thousands of dollars, and prevent clogging the courts. ALL subsequent court action was related to the proceedings brought by COUNCIL. We were trying to defend ourselves, and our community, nothing more nor less than that. Both sides exercised their right to appeal decisions, yet Jason Smith has vilified us for doing so.

Everyone should know that from 2014 until February 2019 the KDC prevented us paying our rates instalments and refunded them when we paid them, but charged us penalties for non-payment.

It is beyond comprehension why the KDC spent so much money pursuing us through the courts when they prevented us from paying our rates and only recovered, in the final wash-up, about $5,000 in disputed penalties plus legal costs. Especially when the KDC is owed millions of dollars in rates that remain unactioned, year after year.

For more detail go to Kaiparaconcerns.co.nz.

Bruce and Heather Rogan
Mangawhai