Councillor queries how playground plan emerged

THIS Cr BensonPope waterfront temporary playground plan (ODT,

11.12.18) has had no councillor consultation, approval, costing, transportation report, or feasibility study, and should have been deferred to next year’s April Fool’s Day front page.

The playground ‘‘plan’’ requires catastrophic destruction of vital road bridge infrastructure worth

$20 millionplus, purchase of a privatelyowned hotel site, rebuilding of a major arterial traffic route and feeder routes, and is modelled on the Margaret Mahy playground fiasco in Christchurch that blew out to more than $40 million.

The next election is October 2019.

Cr Lee Vandervis

Roslyn

[Dunedin City Council chief executive Sue Bidrose replies:

‘‘Cr Vandervis is correct in saying the details of the playground and associated works have not yet been through any formal council process. That’s because at present the entire waterfront design is a ‘‘vision’’.

Council has only committed budget to a bridge, but even that is likely to change from the current models because of a desire to land it at the waterfront, not across the road from the waterfront. The waterfront vision has always contained a plan from the architect to move SH88 closer to the rail line, to create a larger public space at the foot of the basin and to do something with the Jetty St offramp — either move or remove. More recently, there has been discussion about the possibility of a playground at the waterfront to encourage people into the area. Although various options and details have been outlined to councillors, including moving the road, the details about how any of this will be done will not come to council for a vote for some time, as all options, including the status quo, need modelling and assessing. At present we have a vision, wide public support for developing great things on our waterfront. The details of exactly how we do this have yet to be worked through.’’]

Justice system

THE same day a local man was sentenced to three and ahalf years for attacking his partner and trying to pervert the course of justice, a young woman who ran over and killed a young man gets home detention and community work.

Am I the only one who sees something wrong here? She stopped the car down the road, not to see how the young man was but to change drivers. Later they then went back past the crime scene in another car, once again not stopping. She went home and the following day went to a panelbeaters to gauge damage and THEN went to the police with her mother. She has since shown little remorse, as her Facebook posts show.

Isn’t there something terribly awry with our justice system when a death is valued less than an attack on a person and perverting the course of justice?

Brexit

Graham Bulman

Dunedin DOES your leader (ODT, 18.12.18) point to some resolution of the mire Great Britain is in? Theresa May had the opportunity for a second poll when she called the last election. A way of promoting her own sentiment on the topic.

But is this not a test of democracy itself? A straw poll will not show up the divergence of opinion. Nor will it garner ideas from the sea of uncertainty past that point. Democracy, after all, is dictatorship by the majority. Pure populism.

Expecting any government to provide guidance — on its own — is a mistake. A much wider mandate could be expected. David George

Cromwell ..................................

BIBLE READING: . . . over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. — Colossians 3:14