The full meeting minutes are available here.

This was a well attended meeting – many people had come particularly to join in the discussion with the Council Officers about street maintenance in Newtown.

The Wellington City Council CEO Kevin Lavery attended, accompanied by David Chick – newly arrived Chief City Planner, Geoff Swainson – Manager, Transport and Solid Waste, ultimately responsible for addressing most of the concerns with contractors, and Deven Singh – Manager Transport Assets, one of Geoff Swainson’s team, with direct responsibility for the street cleaning contract.

We circulated the paper “Newtown Isn’t Rubbish and Our Streets Shouldn’t Be Either”, previously posted here, and our NRA Executive Member Steve Cosgrove had prepared a slide show of problem areas, which you can see here:  http://tinyurl.com/NewtownRA-2016-May . You are welcome to leave comments on these slides if you wish.  These pictures were the prompt for attendees airing a lot of concerns that have been troubling people for a long time.

The current situation is that the contractor Ventia has chosen not to renew their contract when it runs out in June and Downers will be taking over on the 1st July.  This is a temporary arrangement while WCC considers options.

Kevin Lavery proposed forming a working party with representatives from Residents, Council Officers and Contractors, and we agreed that this would be an excellent way forward.

There is a lot more detail of the discussion in the full minutes.

Other issues discussed included

• an outline of recent submissions to WCC Committees on Newtown Festival Funding, the Annual Plan, Dog Policy and the Animal Bylaw.
• Progress report on reforming the Berhampore Residents’ Association, which is looking promising.
• Discussion of the possibility of learning from Whanganui’s Mainstreet organisation, which is responsible for the central city’s clean and attractive appearance and for a number of Whanganui events.  This needs more time to explore further.
• Meet the Candidates Meeting.   The proposed date is Tuesday 13th September , at St Anne’s Hall, as for past elections.  Proposal to concentrate on local ward candidates.  There are so many mayoral candidates that there wouldn’t be time for everyone.

The next NRA meeting will be on Monday June 20th, 7.30pm at the Community Hall, 71 Daniell St.