Sven Hanne, Stratford District chief executive responds:
We’re just as excited to see the Taranaki Garden Festival win big in the events industry, and while we don’t currently sponsor the event financially, we have always supported this regional event alongside the Fringe Festival, Arts Festival and Sustainable Backyards Trail. This support is through paid advertising opportunities with the festivals and promoting across council channels. The Scarecrow Trail, which has been running seven years now, was also introduced to provide another opportunity for festival-goers to explore the Stratford district while visiting. Our town gardens were maintained in the leadup to this year’s festival, as we do every year, and we believe our contractors did a great job.
Plans to upgrade the town centre are ongoing and as part of this work the location of the Stratford Business Association’s wooden hut will be considered. The council has no control over the upkeep of privatelyowned buildings on Broadway, but is looking to work with private property owners on this as a key focus for its wider Stratford 2035 project.
We agree the Glockenspiel requires a repaint and had originally scheduled this for last year. Due to events outside our control, this work didn’t happen and it has since become apparent that the building will require earthquake strengthening. We are currently awaiting cost estimates for earthquake strengthening and will include this in our upcoming longterm plan.
Once we know the extent and timing of the required work, we will assess whether we paint the building as part of the overall upgrade or whether an interim paintjob is needed.
In the last two years, we have received three complaints about cats around the Centennial Rest Rooms. At the same time we’ve done our best to help re-home some of those cats to reduce the population and our contractors do their best to keep that area tidy, removing any unnecessary rubbish. As the district council has no specific role in the management of cats we have discussed the matter with the Taranaki Regional Council. The main problem here is the ongoing dumping of cats and kittens and we ask people to go through the appropriate groups to re-home any unwanted animals, rather than dumping them. This would greatly help to reduce the stray cat population across Taranaki.
The easiest way for people to raise their concerns regarding any of the above matters is to contact us. Please do so by phoning 06 765 6099, emailing StratfordDC@Stratford.govt. nz or by making a quick report via the free Antenno App.
Letter about council’s response:
R Lilley had asked several pertinent questions regarding the process the council followed in determining its transport plan.
Several of these were not answered by Stratford District Council’s chief executive. I, along with many other interested parties, await the sequel to his initial response.