A report by Stuff last month proclaimed that a four to three vote at the Waitemata Local Board meeting had saved the Western Springs pines ‘from the axe’.
Local Board Chair, Richard Northey confirmed that consent is in place for five years and the final decision on the fate of the pines has only been deferred while further advice is sought from council officers. “The decision is probably two to three months away now,” Northey told Ponsonby News.
The motion passed called for further information about ‘sectional removals’, rather than wholesale felling. Another motion by Sarah Trotman to conduct a health and safety check of each tree by experts was defeated by three votes to four. Trotman told Ponsonby News she was disappointed that her motion of an independent tree risk assessment was turned down.
She also thinks the replanting may be unsuccessful and that the $750,000 budget may be inadequate. Trotman is not alone on the board with a number of reservations about the plans for demolition. Other new board members Alex Bonham and Kerin Leoni supported further consultation, as did Adriana Christie. Only Board Chair Richard Northey, Graeme Gunthorpe and Julie Sandilands were ready to proceed with wholesale felling.
Environmental activist Steve Abel said he was “stoked – we can now have a community plan,” he said. Abel’s group says any trees that are an immediate safety threat should be removed on a staggered basis as the replacement native vegetation takes hold.
However, the board will still make the final decision. The final vote could go either way. There seem to be three members firmly opposed to an immediate complete fell, and three members keen to proceed to carry out the resource consent and cut down the entire 200-plus trees. One member appears to be a swing voter and could be the queen maker.
I’m on record as a submitter to the resource consent application. I supported the application, but listed a number of caveats about how the plan should be carried out. Some of my reservations are still a worry to me.
Further consultation seems vital if local people are to have confidence in local democracy. The board has so far placed too much confidence in council officers’ judgements. Not enough outside expertise has been engaged.
I propose the setting up of a series of citizens’ assemblies to thoroughly canvas public opinion on various issues. The fate of the Western Springs forest could be the first of these. These would call on outside experts to brief the citizens and enable people to weigh up council advice against counter arguments.
A consensus would be reached and I predict most outliers would fall into line with majority thinking. The board could then make its final decision, which would be very controversial if it went against the majority thinking of the citizens’ assembly. This process has worked well in other countries, including the UK.
As more and more trees are chopped down in Auckland at a time of desperate climate change, it does seem profligate to chop down another 200 mature trees. I suspect some protagonists are hiding behind health and safety as their reason for demolition.
If that is correct, then safety issues must be seriously investigated further. No one wants to put the public at risk of being hit by a falling tree, but a huge pile of logs hindering replanting of natives would be a pity, especially if further checks indicate that there is still a lot of life left in many of those old trees.
Even some of us seniors suffering from senescence might live many more years. Still, this is not a trivial decision and should not be trivialised by flippant comments. Let’s do the research and get it right. As an old advert says – good things take time. (John Elliott)
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