Submitters ‘wag’ hearing

David Seymour would most likely have been horrified if he were taking an attendance roll on the opening morning of submission hearings for the New Plymouth District Council’s draft Long-term Plan.

The associate education minister, who has pledged to crack down on school truants, would have discovered that it is not just children who opt to wag their commitments.

Just two of the 12 people who were scheduled to speak during the first session yesterday morning turned up and, ironically, one of them was a long-serving school teacher.

Phil Gayton, known affectionately as “Mr Volleyball” in New Plymouth sporting circles, made the familiar walk to the lectern inside the Civic Centre’s council chamber to deliver a message he has repeated no fewer than six times over the years.

He thanked councillors for including the Tūparikino Active Community Hub in the last long-term plan, something he believed then was finally bringing an end to a “marathon journey” the sporting community had been through in trying to get another indoor stadium built.

Whether the Tūparikino hub would be built using the existing $35 million set aside in 2021 was one of the “big issues” identified by the council in its draft plan after the past three years had been punctuated with budget blowouts for the proposed project.

Backgrounding the desperate need for a six-court stadium to sit alongside the TSB Stadium, Gayton said volleyball, just like basketball, continued to show rapid growth in player numbers.

He also outlined the continued frustration felt in the community that commercial users of the TSB Stadium took precedence over sports users, who were often left scrambling to find alternative venues.

“Just last year we lost the last night of our spring league because a Christmas decoration expo came along and took preference,” he said.

“This year, out of the 20 nights we need, we have already been told eight are unavailable.”

Gayton also gave a number of examples of other cities in New Zealand that had benefited from having adequate indoor sporting facilities and the financial spinoffs associated with hosting national tournaments.

“The TSB Stadium was opened 31 years ago ... By the year 2000 it had become insufficient as far as court space was concerned,” he said.

Gayton ended his submission by urging the council to plan for the future given the district’s population growth and its high proportionof people aged under 30. He also spoke of a desperate need for the Tūparikino hub to be built.

Submission hearings have been scheduled to continue until Tuesday