The Letters to Editor

What do we want?

This little yellow card appeared in my letterbox and it contained a premise - Making change happen - District Plan review. This premise struck me as unusual because a more appropriate question would be - do you want change to happen. Surveys that start from a false premise will always give false outcomes, which is why I have chosen not to respond to the online questions.

I came to Ōmokoroa 7 years ago because it was a quiet little hamlet with a boating club, a golf course and, as it turned out a lovely friendly community with Probus and its spinoff the Peninsula Club, singing, dancing, quilting and book reading groups and so on. What more could a retiree ask for?

It had a dodgy intersection with SH2 which I subsequently found has been lethal, causing death and serious injury. Since that time nothing has been done to the intersection to cope with the massive increase in traffic caused by unfettered development. The idea of further increasing the traffic load before dealing with that problem I regard as being negligent to the point of recklessness. At the very least we should have traffic lights as an interim measure and if the road Transport people don’t like it because their drivers can’t do hill starts they can go through Matamata. Making people safe on the highways must be the first priority. Even the Government says so with its zero policy.

That aside, we need to ask just what sort of community we want in Ōmokoroa. Are we trying to become a high-density suburb of Tauranga (in which case I would appreciate the Tauranga rating levels) or should we be looking at retaining some of the character of the peninsula? The waterfront around the Boating Club used to be a fairly busy place but last summer it became a congested mess of frustrated boaties trying to launch and retrieve, and lots more families trying to find parking spaces so that they could take their kiddies to the updated playground. When amenities are being altered some thought needs to be given to the consequences. Playgrounds could be put in places that people can walk to.

We could do with some more retirement villages to conform to the general character of the old peninsula, more social clubs and social services. I fail to see a need for more traffic-producing semi-industrial and commercial development. People who want local jobs are free to move to Tauranga where they have better public transport and all the amenities. The idea of a container park at Te Puna must send a shudder through any driver wanting to make use of an already overloaded SH2. And Te Puna is too close for comfort if that is the kind of thinking that Western Bays want to spread to Ōmokoroa.

I think it’s a shame that more use is not made of the bus service. Too often my friend and I are the only people on the bus. I think more effort needs to be made to discover why the service is so poorly used. Perhaps it’s something to do with inadequate links to services taking people to shopping centres and beaches they want to go to in town. A ferry service would also be nice - it’s wonderful to travel by water - but judging by bus patronage it could never be economic. Shame.

So in answer to the question that the Council should have been asking, no I don’t want to see any more development along Tauranga suburb lines, and in particular, I want no further development until the road intersection issue has been dealt with. I would hate to die after moving to a quiet hamlet simply because the local council and the roads board can’t get together to deal with the elephant in the room. Hope that helps.

Keith Edwards, Ōmokoroa.