No crying over non-compliance
The public was promised that when Education Minister Chris Hipkins came to Invercargill with his message of vocational education reform he would be faced with a sea of orange. Sure enough, about 60 temporary Stand Up for SIT signs were promptly erected around the high-traffic areas of the city’s CBD.
It was an act of urgent protest and the point was made to the minister that the community didn’t want to see the Southern Institute of Technology disadvantaged, or worse, by proposed reforms.
Now, however, that sea of orange has turned a little bit choppy. A complainant has pointed out to the Invercargill City Council that the campaign, swiftly co-ordinated by Market South, didn’t comply with the rules of the city’s District Plan.
Which is true, strictly speaking. The retort from many grumpy commentators is to question sharply whether it was really necessary to speak so strictly, when this was such a matter of public interest.
Look, this is something less than a big deal but more than the complete bureaucratic triviality some are portraying it to be.
A bit of fixing up is indeed in order and the council is meeting with Market South’s Carla Forbes to discuss what happens next.
She has already apologised if the signage has offended anyone, but added that the hasty nature of the action came from a place of passion for Southland. Given the overwhelming support for the cause, she calls it disappointing that a complaint had been raised.
The solution could be as straightforward as agreeing to remove the signage by an acceptable deadline. Or as not-so-straightforward as lodging a resource consent application.
It’s the nature of a city’s district plan that at times it will present obstructions for the Just Do It brigade. Frequently this is a frustration, sometimes a complete barrier – in which case it should be for good reason.
The complainant did have a point that there was a fairness issue when sports clubs and businesses needed approval to erect signage that didn’t relate to what was on the site, but that same requirement was completely bypassed in this case.
The case could be put that, in general terms, what happened this time was socially sanctioned by the wider public reaction. But that sort of flexibility needs to be allowed for within the rules, rather than justifying the pretence that the rules don’t exist.
Another thing. It’s not as though council staffers could have failed to notice this sovery-high-profile campaign. Yet they hardly seem to have been proactive. It would seem they were content to be inert until somebody else made a fuss.
Is that to be how the council works? Blind eyes turned to the rulebook unless some spoilsport makes an issue of it, requiring the council to trudge, belatedly, into action?
Surely the consultations happening only after the complaint was received should have been initiated by the council – alert, as it was to its own rules – beforehand.
Alternatively, if the reason for the council’s inertia was that there was no sufficiently timely solution within the rules, then the rules should be amended to allow for that possibility in future cases of accepted urgency.
It’s not as though council staffers could have failed to notice this so-very-high-profile campaign . . . It would seem they were content to be inert until somebody else made a fuss.