Hutt City Draft Community LTCCP 2009-2019

Your submission is required by the 5pm Thursday 30th April.

There are several other draft plans that effect the Hutt Valley at present. Listed below are the times for submissions:

Upper Hutt City Councils Draft Plan 1 April – 13 May 2009

Greater Wgtn Regional Council Draft Plan 23 March-24 April at the same time they will also be undertaking separate consultation between 23 March and 24 April on the Regional Land Transport Programme for the Wgtn Region.

But lets look at the Hutt plan in a bit of detail. First its 325 pages long, thats right 325 pages. What are they talking about that takes that much material. Well each household would have received a summary via post.  This document is 14 pages long, and provides a blurb from the Mayor and CEO as to the purpose behind the LTCCP, which is to look ahead 10 years, an opportunity to provide your views on projects and activities they are proposing and how they will spend the money to fund this in the coming 10 years. The 325 page document gives far greater depth, in fact its frightening that it takes this much space to explain their goals / activities etc. One puts this up against the Greater Wgtn plan of the same agenda (Long term planning) it only runs to 223 pages, 100 pages less.

But the whole purpose of these documents is to provide greater accountability to you the ratepayer, you pay these guys to provide services. The document is loaded with facts and projections.

A cursory look unfolds a couple of  facts /harbingers

• Rates  Expect these to be around 2-3% increase each year (includes inflation). If inflation is higher rates will be higher.               
• Income Council gets approx 64% of its income from rates, property owners in the Hutt 
• Debt The Council is $75m in debt (2009) and expects to get this down to $30m (2015)

Several projects (in excess of $1/2million) are listed for consideration on the submission form, and as democracy goes the only way you can have your say is via a submission, part of the  form survey. This leads to a chance to present your submission to the Mayor in early May, if you desire. The process is similar for the other LTCCP plans.

One has to dig quite depth to find specifics, but in line with current postings of interest in the Hutt Valley, the  railway line is one subject that crosses the boundaries of several of these plans. By searching through the plans available one can find some interesting points:

1.   Hutt LTCCP P.165 investigate with Greater Wgtn Regional Council opportunities to expand parking at Waterloo Railway station (Park & Ride).

2. Greater Wgtn LTCCP P.20 Introduce a charge for Park & Ride Parking. Investigate a levy for parking at Park & Ride areas that are currently experiencing high usage where demand exceeds supply. see  http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/1b30b368#/1b30b368/21

One could concur that the Waterloo interchange Park and Ride parking is to be one of these areas. It currently is the second highest use railway station (behind Porirua). It has 617 carparks, and on most days carparks are scarce. An interesting fact also is that 50% of people that use the park live within 1.85km of the parks.

I would think that in light of this, albeit from 2 seperate plans that consideration be given to the commuters who use rail, that this matter be brought to light sooner rather than later.

How come the current parking has been provided for many years without charge?

Is charging going to impact on other transport alternatives, is it  not part of Greater Wgtn Regional to ensure traffic corridors are sustained and maximised?

Would it not be courtesy to state within the Hutt Plan that charges are contemplated for this exercise?

Unfortunately the above can only be answered by the Councils involved in time, what I am more concerned about is a level of transparency in each councils agendas especially where councils have dual responsibility.

What else lies within these documents ?  

The only way is to look at these documents in greater depth especially around areas that concern you, or impact on your residence or livelihood. Find any let me know!