What Happened at Coouncil

Marie from Waikanae

I have just returned from a meeting of KCDC where the closure of the recycling centre was discussed. I have pasted my address to Councillors below for those who missed the meeting. I don’t resile from anything in this address, although the Mayor threatened me with defamation. In my experience, however, it’s pretty hard to sue someone for having an opinion. Given the way in which the community has been ignored, perhaps we can sue the council for deafamation.
We had a good turnout of supporters in the gallery and Michelle Lewis presented her petition, with an astounding 1015 signatures collected in 10 days. On the basis of her presentation the Mayor advised he would be asking the CE to provide a report on the district recycling facilities. When pressed, he would not include the Waikanae recycling centre specifically in the scope of the report. Jackie Elliot attempted to move a motion that the recycling centre remain open but was blocked. Jocelyn Prvanov similarly was blocked from speaking. Afterwards, a newcomer to council proceedings commented that she was shocked at the viciousness of the meeting behaviour and the treatment of councillors opposed to the closure. I really admired the persistence with which Jackie made every effort to have her motion put forward.
The purpose of local government contains a requirement to act on behalf of communities, as set out in the Local Government Act 2002. Curiously, the response to my address contained nothing about this, which was addressed in my first point. Instead the focus zeroed in on a brief comment I made about horse trading. This self-absorbed response regarded my comment as libellous. Anyone who has been in politics knows that horse trading is part of the territory. Its what people do. They lobby each other for votes and agree to support each other’s initiatives. So what? The hoo ha over this comment suggests to me that the Council has misread the community and does not understand the depth of feeling on this issue. I think its time they woke up and smelled the dissatisfaction. And its not the only thing with an odor surrounding this. Something smells pretty awful in this whole process.
The reluctance to include the Waikanae Recycling Centre in the scope of the council report is telling. It tells me that this is just another attempt to fob us off and the report is going nowhere. So its business as usual. See you all tomorrow outside the council building at 10.00 am. Bring placards and a good voice and lets send yet another message to council. Perhaps tomorrow they will have their hearing aids turned on.



Address to Council as follows:Good Morning, In relation to the Climate Change Framework I wish to speak to the council decision to close the Waikanae Recycling Centre, in my capacity as chair of Save Our Recycling Targets group, SORT for short. There are three points I wish to make. Firstly
1. The Consultation Process Was Not Adequate

The climate change framework sets out in its principles, item 6 which states “decision making is inclusive, transparent and based on ongoing collaboration and consultation with the wider community” But that’s not what happened when the decision was made to close the recycling centre.
We consider that there should have been a lot more discussion on the issue. The limited discussion that was held was ignored by council. The majority of submissions to the long term plan were opposed to the closure (presumably from those few residents that were “in the know”) and there was no support for the closure from participants in the LTP workshops.
The arguments concerning equality as reasons for the closure are an insult. There was no equality in this decision making process. It was neither inclusive nor transparent. The community had no input into the decision.
In this respect council is in breach of the Local Government Act.

2. The decision to close the recycling centre is inconsistent with Council’s policy on Sustainable Waste Management, the climate emergency action framework and the Long Term Plan..
We know that kerbside recycling has a high contamination rate. A large percentage of what is collected ends up in landfill. The most efficient way to recycle is through a dedicated facility where the waste is sorted on site. In our view, it is short-sighted of Council to close this.

Both the LTP and the Climate Emergency Action Framework talk about supporting the community to minimize waste, enabling communities to be resilient and have access to the services they need, promoting sustainable practices in the community to see a reduction in waste. And here’s the kicker “to reduce council emissions we’ve implemented changes to conserve energy, reduce fossil fuel use, increase use of renewable energy and improve how we dispose of waste”. Since when does closing a recycling facility improve disposal of waste? Since when does driving 15 kms to an outside recycling facility reduce fossil fuel use? This closure make a mockery of these objectives. Set against the closure of our facility, the Long term plan reads like a large pile of empty rhetoric.

The Climate Change Action Group has publicly stated that this closure sends entirely the wrong message regarding climate change. And we agree with them.

In relation to Projected Growth. There are numerous housing projects planned for Waikanae which is expected to grow considerably in the next decade. In excess of 700 housing units are planned. To put it in plain English, as one resident has said
“Why would they want to close it, we are only going to get bigger”


3. Why Indeed?
We do not accept the reasons given for this closure and consider that there are other unstated reasons for closing the recycling centre. It has led us to question the integrity of the process.
Firstly the way in which the vote was rushed through in the LTP workshop. Councillors who initially voted for the centre to remain open subsequently voted for the closure. In our view, there has been some pretty vicious horse trading going on.
We consider that the real reason for the closure of the Waikanae recycling centre is an attempt to circumvent the requirements of the Resource Management Act and provide the Summerset retirement village project with a construction access without having to provide an offset.

Thus, from both a democratic and environmental standpoint, this closure and its process, lacks integrity. It does not honour Council’s commitment to climate change and it has ignored the wishes of the community. We call on council to revoke this decision.