Swampy Marsh's June Newsletter

JUNE 2013

Hi Wellington

• Thanks to all who have sent me feedback on the 2013 Draft Annual Plan; I place a lot of value on your opinion. It offers me a different perspective to council’s regular submitters.

• One point that did crop up was the state of council’s dilapidated buildings in Shelly Bay (Westside Studios and the adjacent building). I believe any deals done with respect to these must be transparent. I will be proposing staff identify whether council should retain the buildings and if we do retain ownership look at options for restoring them.

• Voting for the airport extension consent funding was 11-2. Interesting that some of those pro-airport extension councillors voted against the basin flyover, claiming its negative visual aspect blah blah would destroy the basin. Do you think the council should support roading infrastructure so passengers and freight can easily access the airport?

• Wgtn Airport has put up 1 million dollars, council voted to match this with up to a million dollars towards the work and detail required to obtain resource consent to extend the airport runway. In a nutshell with a single flight from Wellington we would be able to reach 70% of the world’s population and just as importantly they can reach us. Should council be helping the airport to look for funding to complete the job?

• I’m also interested to hear from you if council should still be pushing for the second Mount Victoria Tunnel?
• Kilbirnie Town Centre upgrade has been a debacle, not many councillors know what it feels like to get up in the morning understanding that if you don’t sell anything you don’t eat. I do and I despair for what the Kilbirnie retailers have been put through. I’m pushing for council to help with a campaign to promote the renovated Kilbirnie Town Centre after completion in early August. Do you have any ideas on how we can best do this?

• The artificial sports field at St Pats opened on Thursday, this joint venture approach saved ratepayers nearly one million dollars, good work by John Morrison.

• Often we don’t realise the input by Weta to many big movies such as Ironman 3 and coming soon Superman… Man of Steel and they have 300 more people starting work there soon. As a council how can we use this to promote Wellington?

• Thanks for the offers of help and suggested locations for my election signage when the time comes.  Any more offers of help would be appreciated and if you have a high profile fence that would take one of my election signs please let me know.

Keep in touch

Cheers

Simon "Swampy" Marsh
Wellington Councillor

ENDS

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