Wellington.Scoop report by Mary Argue
Building waste fragments suspected to contain asbestos have been found on a popular beach track near Seatoun in Wellington. Local Anne Taylor was left feeling “gutted” after her discovery while walking in the Oruaiti Reserve, east of Seatoun beach.
The artist and “citizen scientist” reported her findings to the Wellington City Council supplying photographs and the location of the fragments.
After nearly a month of being a “squeaky wheel,” Taylor learned the information was with a beach clean-up crew who also remove asbestos near Moa Point and at the edge of the Taputeranga Marine Reserve between Houghton Bay and Hungerford Road.
Wellington.Scoop report by Jem Traylen
They are closed to the public, they are never publicly notified, records of them are never published and last year Wellington City Council held 63 of them. Welcome to the secretive world of council workshops – the behind closed-doors gatherings of councillors that are not counted as ‘meetings’ so long as formal decisions are never made.
RNZ’s Local Democracy Reporting recently surveyed 31 councils and found that 23 of them excluded the public from all of their workshops.
RNZ’s report prompted Wellington City councillor Iona Pannett to begin a campaign to change council practice.
Figures obtained under the Local Government Official Information Act show that last year the number of workshops held by the Wellington City Council shot up from 37 in 2018 and 35 in 2019 to 63 in 2020 – a rate of more than one a week, and all closed to the public.
Wellington.Scoop report by Jem Traylen
A koha restaurant is expanding from one to three nights a week, thanks to demand from Wellington diners and an abundant supply of surplus food.
Everybody Eats is a charity that turns surplus food, that would otherwise have gone to landfill, into restaurant-quality three-course meals and diners are only asked to “pay what you feel”. It began in Auckland in 2017 and opened a weekly pop-up in Wellington last October.
The concept has been such a hit with Wellingtonians, in terms of diners, volunteers and donors, that the pop-up phase has officially ended. A lease has been signed, a chef hired, equipment installed, and opening hours extended.
News from ICW
Inner City Wellington (ICW) has always tried to work cooperatively and in good faith with the Wellington City Council (WCC). An example of one successful co-operative outcome was the development of Camera Base Wellington in 2013. Yet, in contradiction of their stated aims of working with communities, WCC arbitrarily shut this operation down overnight in March 2020 with no consultation or notification to ICW.
The WCC CCTV cameras were originally put in place for the Rugby World Cup in 2011 and in 2013 the police approached ICW to provide volunteers to utilise this network. ICW agreed, and David Webb co-ordinated a group of 48-50 volunteers working at the Central Police Station.
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