Council Sells A Dummy In Community Plan

In researching information on the Wellington Council’s proposal to open up Manners Mall, Wellington’s Political Busker, Benjamin Easton appears to have uncovered a significant error in the Long Term Council Community Plan 2009/19 (LTCCP).

Under Volume 2 of the plan Mr Easton says he was researching the Significance Policy,because it would demonstrate how the Council proposes the consideration of its relationship with the citizenship when undertaking a major proposal like that of opening up the mall. Easton describes his discovery as “very unfortunate”.

“The question I am taking into the Court is whether or not the Council have exercised their discretion responsibly or consistently with the practice of any reasonable person. Clearly, in my view, this is not the case where in the data I have collected from the mall, over two thirds of its direct users do not want it opened and the Council have neglected their needs.

Easton advises that in point 2.3 of the plan the information relative to their consultation process isn’t correct. The reference to s 82 of the Local Government Act 2002 states it is about “consultation processes”. However, the section is in fact about the Principles of consultation, which is considerably different to the processes.

“In part for me to be successful in the matter of a judicial review, I have to show an inconsistency between the stated proposals in the opening up of the mall and those which are suggested are the long term plans. It seems to me that there couldn’t be much of a better description of how I could be right when I go to LTCCP, (to be voted in next Monday) and I find that the citizens are succinctly misled on a matter as fundamental as their fiduciary expectation”. Easton adds, “That’s not all either. “I uncovered that the dates of the AC Nielson survey were recorded on the file as if they happened on January 2008 and not in 2009. Ordinarily that wouldn’t matter to me but the fact is if the survey was done on the earlier date, it could not be seen as it presently stands, like a bruised and bleeding thumb, like a rear guard action to save Council face about how a majority of Wellingtonians don’t want a bar of the buses going through Manners”.

Mr Easton has also discovered through a quick survey of the retailers that many were not hand delivered the pamphlets in November 08 as the Council claims on its website. “For anyone else’s purposes I may not be much more than an unemployed busker” claims the busker, “but if I have uncovered some pretty serious faults in this process and in no time at all, it makes me wonder what else will be uncovered if a fuller investigation was undertaken into the Council’s conventional affairs”.

Easton has a meeting organised about his proposed judicial review on Friday, 26th June, 7pm on the Mezzanine Floor of the Wellington Public Library. Anyone is invited and welcome.    

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