City bridge opposition has fallen into silence

Palmerston North’s He Ara Kotahi cycle and pedestrian bridge over the Manawatu River has cleared its final hurdle.

The deadline has passed for appeals against the commissioners’ decision granting resource consents for the project to go ahead at Dittmer Drive, with none of its opponents lodging an appeal with the Environment Court.

Project steering group chairman Ray Swadel said the group was pleased to have the land use and discharge and water permits granted, clearing the way for construction to start.

The goal is to have a contractor appointed and ready to start building in September, with the 190 metre-long bridge finished, open and in use by the end of 2018.

The forecast completion date for the $10 million-bridge and pathways project had slipped back six months from the original June 2018 deadline.

That timing had been a condition of attracting $3m from the Urban Cycleways Programme for the bridge and linking pathways to Massey and Linton.

Swadel said the New Zealand Transport Agency, providing $3.2m through the National Land Transport Fund, was on the steering group and working as a partner with the city council.

Swadel said it had taken longer than originally expected for the consents to come through, but work had continued behind the scenes on developing detailed designs. The concept was based on the idea of a karaka tree falling across the river, with a central viewing platform.

There had been a registrationof-interest process and the steering group was working with two preferred contractors on the designs. Of the likely challengers to the project, Dittmer Drive resident Ken Baird said he had given up the fight when the commissioners’ decision was released.

Buick Cres resident Iola Haggarty said at the time she thought she would appeal, but has since decided to ‘‘let it lie as it has fallen’’.

She said she still thought the bridge location was wrong, that consultation around three other possible sites had been poor and that mayor Grant Smith had pushed for the site at the end of Ruha St against the wishes of residents.

For a lot of people, the bridge would be known as ‘‘Smith’s Folly’’, she said. But she felt she had been ‘‘berated’’ for saying she would appeal and had decided to stand down.

In another part of the He Ara Kotahi – a pathway that brings people together – project, detailed plans for the second stage of the pathway between Turitea Stream and Linton Military Camp were nearing completion.

‘‘Negotiations between the landowners, Massey University, and the NZ Army are well advanced and we’ll be making an announcement on the final route shortly,’’ Swadel said.

Stage one of the pathway between the Fitzherbert Bridge and Turitea Stream was completed earlier this year. Each year, borrowers check out about 1 million items from the Palmerston North City Library.

Yet at any time, borrowers have a collection of only 220,000 physical items to choose from, including a range of DVDS and jigsaws, audio and e-books, as well as conventional books.

Content management team leader Leah Bruce says on average, each item is checked out six times a year, the second highest turnover rate for similar-sized libraries in Australia and New Zealand.

It gives the purchasers confidence they are buying the right stuff.

The buyers have an annual budget of $750,000 to keep the collection up-to-date, adding about 30,000 items each year to keep up with latest releases and to replace worn-out old favourites and unloved mistakes.

The three content development librarians need to keep their fingers on the pulse of what is trending in children’s, fiction and non-fiction circles.

They do that by considering public requests made on the library’s homepage. They see publishers’ representatives, read journals, visit bookshops and check online sites.

They scour newspapers and magazines for reviews, and watch what is on television and at the movies.

The capped budget means they cannot buy everything and there is a policy to follow.

That policy is more about supporting intellectual freedom than restricting choice and includes materials in a range of languages to cater for a culturally diverse community.

The rule for DVDS is that they must have a valid New Zealand rating.

Books and other items are sourced from all over the place, with the bulk ordered online, but buying local, even directly from a city bookshop, is a favourite.

When the boxes of purchases arrive, almost every day, it is a bit like unwrapping Christmas presents. Invoices have to be checked against the deliveries and then the new purchases have to transformed into library items.

A team of four manages the science of cataloguing, finding or assigning Dewey numbers and attaching the unique RFID codes.

Some books have their spines taped and their covers covered to improve their longevity.

And after a ride around the top floor, the new offerings are put on a trolley to be delivered downstairs to be issued to the borrowers who requested them, displayed in the new-issues area, or go directly to the regular shelves. be