Media Release
17 September 2011
Dr. Grant Gillon, Member Kaipatiki Board

Kaipatiki Set to Lose Millions from Park Budget.

“I am outraged that plans seem to be in process to extract Millions of dollars from Kaipatiki Local Board's park acquisition budget and spend it in another Board's area" said Kaipatiki Local Board member today.

Kaipatiki's area is huge and includes the whole of the Shore west of the motorway and extends as far north as Sunset Road. The population is approximately 86,000 people which is similar to Hibiscus and Bays but significantly higher than the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board area of approx 57,000 and Upper Harbour (49,000).

"Yet there are plans to strip-mine millions of dollars from our community's park budget built up from subdivision contributions of a long period of time and transfer it to a grandiose project elsewhere in the City and certainly not in the Glenfield, Northcote, Birkenhead, Beach Haven communities,” said Dr. Gillon.

“Last year, North Shore City Council made provision for $5 million for purchasing more Chelsea Heritage Estate parkland and $3 million in two projects to enhance Le Roys Bush plus numerous other smaller park enhancing projects.

“This secret plan makes a mockery of our current community consultation process. Kaipatiki community's desires will obviously be shunted aside and the budget pillaged for another community.”

“I was concerned that I could not get straight answers about the state of Kaipatiki's budget despite asking strong questions since last November.”

“In addition, some local members seem to advise against trying to include the above projects in our long term plan for the Kaipatiki area, comments which further aroused suspicion.” Dr. Gillon said.

The Kaipatiki Local Board has to enter an agreement with Auckland Council that identifies the intended levels of service provision for our area including performance targets and estimated costs of the services. We are still in that process and yet I understand officers are working on plans that will see Kaipatiki lose the park's monies for many years to come.

“My tenure as Chair of North Shore City’s Strategy and Finance committee and working on the City’s Annual Plan and Long Term Community Plan has provided me with sound skills and experience to understand the budgets that were provided for our community” Dr. Gillon said.

Kaipatiki's capital budget is already well below what many other Boards are enjoying and this will be a further blow to a community that has been overlooked under previous administrations.

Kaipatiki's budget sits at only $6.41 per person compared with the allocation to Devonport-Takapuna of $42.91 and Henderson-Massey of $254.52. This action will further increase the disparity.

I call on our two local Councillors to work hard to ensure that Kaipatiki retains the budget that it has been promised and any grandiose schemes, no matter how worthy, in other board areas be funded from elsewhere in Council's budget.

ENDS

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