Howick Local Board Business Meeting report for May 2023

On Thursday 18 May, the Howick Local Board held our business meeting for the month. Here’s a summary of some of the key discussions and outcomes. At the end there are links to the official minutes and a recording of this (and previous) meetings.

After opening the meeting, we confirmed our minutes from April and our additional meeting on 11 May to provide our feedback on the budget. We confirmed there were no apologies, leaves of absence or petitions this month.

We then heard four deputations and one public forum item, starting with Hiraani Himona and Ashley Grogan from Arts Out East who presented an update on their recent work, including their increased focus on partnerships with local businesses and town centres. It was great to see how they had leveraged our funding to provide even more for local creatives while connecting art with new audiences.

We’re fortunate to have two amazing community houses in our area and Jennie McCormick, Donna Mager, and Selena Donaldson presented on the work done at the Highland Park and Anchorage Park Community Houses. Issues with the tired interior paint and state of the carpark at Anchorage Park is impacting its ability to attract hirers so we’ve asked staff to investigation options to address these issues.

Ruth White from Business East Tamaki and Larissa Michelsen of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare came to talk to us about the opportunity to provide more safe cycle paths for commuters. A recent survey from Waka Kotahi every major employment centre across the country showed East Tamaki had the highest vehicle kilometers travelled and was increasing. Feedback from local employees was that many more would cycle and use public transport if there were more cycle paths.

Jenny Rowsell and Blair Telfer from Howick Coastguard provided an update on the incredible work they do to save lives at sea, with over 80 people saved this year alone. The history of the organisation goes back to the Howick Sea Rescue Organisation founded in 1956 after the tragic drowning of three local teens. Now they provide community education and support as well as operating as part of the wider Coastguard network to save lives across the Hauraki Gulf. We thanked them for their support during the recent ANZAC Day services, where they stepped in at short notice to provide the first aid services when the planned provider pulled out.

Local resident Vanessa Phillips had written the Board a letter regarding the Notice of Requirement for the Airport to Botany rapid transport project and came to speak to her concerns.

We then took an adjournment (break) to allow our Ward Councillors Sharon Stewart and Maurice Williamson to be able to present some information and resources on the Annual Budget. It’s a little unusual but this allowed us to have a robust and open discussion about the challenges and opportunities facing Auckland Council as it works to set its budget for the upcoming year.

After we resumed the meeting, we formally received the written report from our Councillors and then my Chairpersons Report. My report noted the large number of submissions Auckland Council had received on the budget (record breaking 3,499) with themes around continuing our environmental programmes, supporting arts, culture, and youth. The Board has used this valuable public feedback as we’ve formed our response to the regional topics and while considering our local work programmes. We’ve had a lot of feedback from residents of Buckland’s Beach that fishing along the waterfront is creating a public nuisance as well as health and safety issues. We formally asked that the Safety and Regulatory Committee investigate adding a control to address these issues.

We noted the urgent decision on our feedback on Auckland Council’s review of Local Elections 2022 Our feedback was similar to what we provided to the Parliamentary review, but with more specific details around how it was managed by council.

We also noted our urgent decision on feedback on the proposed Local Crime Fund which is a one-off $2M from central government to Auckland Council for community safety and crime prevention. We supported the proposal to allocate the funds to local boards to spend as they see fit, recognising that local knowledge is critical and many impacted businesses are outside Business Improvement Districts (BIDs).

Business Improvement Districts are special areas where business associations are funded to run activities that promote economic growth in their area. The funding comes from a targeted rate, requested by the business association which council collects on their behalf and then hands over to them to manage (100% of the targeted rate goes to the business association). We have two in our area – Business East Tamaki (previously known as GETBA) and Howick Village Association – and we endorsed the rates they’ve asked for.

This month we had another reserve that needed reclassification. Cockle Bay Reserve has a historic building, the Windross House Restaurant which was built about 124 years ago. While the current operators have been running it since 2008, the reserve wasn’t classified to allow this so, after expert advice, we agreed to correct this. This allowed us to grant them a new commercial lease which in turn will allow council to address the maintenance issues at the site.

Auckland Council’s financial year ends on 30 June and starts of 1 July, but work continues in the community delivering programmes for locals. To help ensure continuity, we approved interim arts and community funding to allow these community groups to continue while we deliberate on the full budget for the new year. We also confirmed the renewal of the Community Centre Management agreements already in place – these will undergo a more thorough review before next year.

We had some funding available for reallocation, mostly the result of cancelled events due to poor weather. This money has to be committed before the end of our financial year (30 June) and staff provided us some advice for programmes that could use the money in the limited time available. Most of the funding was reallocated to our local environmental programmes, with the remainder put towards the Howick Youth Facility project. We ran a successful trial of this in 2022 in the Botany Town Centre which has generated some useful information about what we might do differently. We hope that this funding will kick start a more permanent solution to providing a dedicated space for our young people.

Following on the public forum item earlier, we provided our feedback on the Airport to Botany rapid transport project. We support the project which will help create better public transport connections through to the airport and surrounding suburbs. We noted some concerns about the loss of trees, with suggestions on how the project could mitigate this. Our feedback also encouraged a wider look at walking and cycling infrastructure, including considering completing the Chapel Road network which runs parallel to the proposed route.

Lastly we made decisions on our community grants. We review and discuss these in our confidential workshops, getting advice and information from the application paperwork and staff. While we’re fortunate to have a well-funded grant programme, we always take these decisions seriously to ensure that we’re allocating public money in a fair and effective manner. There was some discussion about adjourning the meeting until the following week, to allow for a wider conversation about the options. However, the majority of the Board wished to proceed as originally proposed and so we did, approving $160,731.16 to local community groups.

Our meeting closed just before 5pm, making it the longest I’ve chaired so far.

Minutes of the meeting are available here: https://infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/RedirectToDoc.aspx?URL=Open/2023/05/20230518_HW_MIN_11570_WEB.htm

along with related attachments like presentations here: https://infocouncil.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/RedirectToDoc.aspx?URL=Open/2023/05/20230518_HW_MAT_11570_WEB.htm

And a recording of the meeting is available here: https://youtu.be/rpcKFG3XneE and previous meetings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist...

Our next normal Business Meeting is scheduled for Thursday 22 June 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).