Residents losing sleep over council’s ‘unfair’ paths proposal
Residents are losing sleep and worrying about their retirement savings because of a proposed council policy.
For Hadleigh Petherick, the cost would be “mind-blowing”, he told the Wellington City Council committee yesterday. Fixing the retaining wall outside his house had been quoted at $240,000. Other residents were facing similar costs of more than $100,000 to provide a long-term fix for the retaining walls that they had no part in creating.
The Half-Cost Path Policy may sound obscure, but homeowners described it as discriminatory and unfair. Rather than just dealing with paths, it extended homeowners’ maintenance obligations to retaining walls as well as the paths on top of them.
There was laughter at the hearings when Kelburn resident Philippa Conway showed a photo of the retaining wall in front of her property. Next to the 5-metre concrete retaining wall, Conway looked tiny.
“I put myself in a photo to help you see the scale of the wall,” she told the council committee.
The wall is almost 100 years old, dating back to the days when there was limited access to Karori. It’s on land owned by the council.
After a policy review – likely brought on by an increasing number of slips on Wellington’s hills – the council does not want to pay for the upkeep of these paths and retaining walls like the ones outside Conway’s property.
Under the current policy, owners pay half of the cost of maintenance for the paths leading to their homes that are not used as thoroughfare. The council picks up the rest of the cost.
The council has proposed a change that would see homeowners pay 100% of the cost for these paths, shared with their neighbours. “This wall was not built to benefit the households above the wall. It was built to widen the street ... I don’t see why I and my neighbours should be forced to take over responsibility for what was essentially a roading project,” Conway told councillors.
Residents said the policy was unfair, arbitrary and poorly thought through. During the lunch break, submitters shared contact details and talked about a potential class action lawsuit if the policy did go ahead in its current form.
From the very start, submitters were talking about whether the property might end up in court. Carolyn Scaddan said she was not satisfied with the five-minute speaking slots allocated.
“This proposal is causing me and others unbelievable stress and anxiety,” she said.
“I’m not sleeping because of my concerns about the potential costs, which could run into millions if we have a bad slip.”
For Gillian Hubbard, a retired Kelburn resident, the letter felt like an “extreme” proposal to essentially take away her savings.
“This felt like a Mr Bates and the Post Office moment,” she said, referring to the United Kingdom legal scandal. “Surely this isn’t happening, something isn’t right here.”
To Hubbard, the policy change seemed more like an entirely new policy. Retaining walls, which are the thing no-one wants to take responsibility for, are not addressed in the current half-cost path policy. As the name suggests, the policy focuses on the paths themselves.
By adding in retaining walls – which can cost millions rather than thousands to fix – the council had totally changed the policy, she said.