Watchdogs frustrated

The Far North District Council’s admission that seven of its bylaws have expired, and therefore have no legal standing, has angered Bay of Islands Watchdogs’ Leonie Exel.

Ms Exel said she had lodged a series of questions under the Official Information Act in December, and had been advised by the council’s legal services department in February that no bylaws were out of date.

(The letter actually stated that none of the bylaws currently [February 4] published on the council’s website had been automatically revoked due to review non-compliance. It was not clear whether those now admitted as being revoked were on the website at that time. Editor).

“I don’t know what the legal implications of this are for residents fined or in some manner prosecuted under those bylaws, or for staff trying to obtain compliance from people under those bylaws,” Ms Exel said, but her particular concern was the now revoked reserves bylaw.

“At the end of 2018, council management asked for an urgent, last-minute change to the dog control bylaw, after the consultation on that bylaw had ended,” she said. “Council management said that in order to be in concert with FNDC’s reserves bylaw, and the Reserves Act, the dog bylaw must ban dogs off-leash in every reserve in Northland. This was untrue.

“The Reserves Act bans dogs off-leash in certain types of reserve (eg. scenic), but it does not require that dogs be banned from recreation reserves, like the Kerikeri Domain and many other big public spaces in Northland.

“We were really frustrated by this, as it was done so quickly none of us had time to research it and check it out. Now we find that . . . the FNDC reserves bylaw doesn’t even exist, legally, at present anyway.”