Path policy change ‘not easy fix’, council told
If Wellington City Council goes ahead with handing over the responsibility for paths on council land to homeowners, it will need to make an individual legal agreement with each affected property owner.
“It’s not going to be an easy fix even if we revoke the policy,” the council’s Chief Infrastructure Officer Siobhan Procter told councillors at the most recent Environment and Infrastructure Committee meeting.
“Once we do that, we do have to reach individual legal agreements with each property owner who currently benefits from the policy.”
That, she warned, would be “arduous”. The council has notified 1018 property owners on 288 paths that it is reviewing its policy of who pays for the maintenance of paths on council land. The council currently pays half the cost of maintaining pathways but wants homeowners to pay the total cost. Paths used as a thoroughfare are exempt.
Procter described the current policy as “administratively very, very burdensome”.
She said that if work needed to be done on a half-cost path, council officers had to approach homeowners for their contribution. “It is very rare that you get agreement to that contribution and as a result the work just doesn’t get done.”
But if the policy is scrapped, Procter said that the council would need to bring the paths up to scratch at a cost of roughly $1.3 million.
The current policy was adopted in 1934 and Wellington is thought to be the only council in New Zealand that splits the cost 50-50.
Khandallah resident Nick Hough recently received a letter regarding his shared path.
It was “outrageous” that the council was now looking to change the agreement that was outlined in his LIM (land information memorandum), he said.
“We would all love to wash our hands of a financial obligation rather than face up to them.”
Litigation lawyer Michael Wolff predicted that the proposed policy would have an unexpected consequence.
Homeowners would have to seek legal advice and in some cases sorting out the issues would be complex and therefore expensive, he warned.
Wolff said Wellington had a unique topography and every case would have to be looked at individually.
“It is a complex issue and each situation is going to be unique, which is Wellington down to a tee,” Wolff said.
And a person who had lived in a house for 60 years could be in a different position from someone (nearby) who purchased last year, Wolff said.
With modern homes, the LIM report should contain relevant information on paths and retaining walls, and who is expected to meet the cost.
Hough said there was no mention in his LIM of maintaining retaining walls near the path.
A council report said that for paths that have a retaining wall, the cost for homeowners could be as much as $2 million.
Morgan Slyfield agreed with Wolff that each case was likely to be different.
That could potentially mean homeowners have to get legal, building, resource consent and engineering advice.
Historically council’s policy on pathways “has been fast and loose” and he suspects that in a lot of cases, the policy was never properly recorded.
“If you go back 30, 60, 90 years the policy would have varied from officer to officer.”
Lawyer John Gordon said he was “horrified” to read what the Wellington City Council was proposing.
He described the concept of homeowners having to meet the cost of pathways or walls on council land as “bizarre” and said that people getting the letter would probably have the same reaction.
“Some ratepayers will be pretty upset by this.”
Wellington City councillor Diane Calvert says the proposed policy is a “diversion” to deflect attention away from more pressing issues in the long term plan.
Rather than saving money on paths, she wants her colleagues to take a closer look at cycleways.
During the earlier committee meeting, councillor Sarah Free – who herself lives off a private shared path – said there were instances that seemed to be “really unfair” and it wasn’t an issue which just impacted a small number of people.
“We’ve got a lot of steep banks in Wellington. It’s an area we do need to seek some feedback on what’s fair because these retaining walls are expensive if they go wrong.”
She felt community feedback was important and there would likely be a “fair range of views”.
“Some ratepayers will be pretty upset by this.” John Gordon Lawyer