West Coast Regional candidates strut stuff
A smattering of West Coast Regional councillors and a newcomer trying for a seat in Westland fronted a 'meet the candidates' forum in Hokitika on Wednesday night.
Sitting councillors Debra Magner and Stuart Challenger took to the stage along with Peter Haddock of Greymouth, who is throwing his hat in the ring for Westland.
Magner promoted her farming and accounting background and said she hoped to build on her first term's work if re-elected.
This had included a push to bring about better internal reporting systems at the West Coast Regional Council -- including a Risk and Assurance Committee which she has chaired.
This was important for the council to sustainably manage its environmental oversight responsibility on a "path of continuous improvement," to be able to respond to community need and have the capacity to gain and retain external funding for infrastructure projects.
Peter Haddock, a retiring Grey district councillor of South Beach, is a partner in Greymouth engineering firm Equip.
He noted his role in building the Greymouth floodwall in the late 1980s.
Haddock said the regional council currently had "real problems" with a faction across the ward boundaries of Westland and Grey.
Loss of experienced staff and delays in consenting impacted on the council's ability to administer Government funding, which affected the rating districts.
This "loss of unity" sent a bad signal to the Government.
He would focus on this and at the same time "fight for local democracy".
Challenger, an environmental engineer, said he hoped to continue as the need for diverse representation at the table was no different from when he first stood in 2013.
The council needed diverse backgrounds like his to balance the mining, and dairy farming influence.
"I believe the regional council has too many meetings behind closed doors."
The biggest issue the region faced was the impact of climate change which required wider collaboration and "a multi-generational approach".
Two other candidates for Westland, Andrew Campbell and Fritha Templeton, were not present.
Templeton said on Friday she intended to withdraw due to family circumstances.
Council deputy electoral officer Nichola Costley said today the voting papers had been printed, and Templeton had been advised to run a campaign letting people know she was out of the running.
Wednesday night's forum included the five candidates for the Westland District Mayoralty plus several ward candidates for the Westland District Council.
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Buses can be a relaxing way to get home if you have a seat and enough space. However, it can be off-putting when someone is taking a phone call next to you.
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Horse rider pleads for support to keep them safe on roads
A nationwide campaign to have horse-riders officially recognised as vulnerable road users has been offered supported by the West Coast’s Regional Transport committee.
The committee heard a presentation this month from equestrian safety advocate Julia McLean, who recently took a petition to Parliament on behalf of riding associations across the country.
The petition, signed by close to 9000 people, asks the government to recognise the vulnerability of horse riders in transport legislation.
“Currently we sit in the ‘other road user’ category and that gives no benefits whatsoever and most critically we are not included in education or road safety-messaging,” McLean said.
Horse-riders were continually dealing with reckless and dangerous behaviour by motorists, she told the committee.
“We get reports from our rider groups of horses being killed: there was one in Reefton, and another in Ruatoki; just two weeks ago a horse was hit and killed by a truck and the rider was taken to hospital."
Riders were also put at risk by aggressive drivers tooting their horns, winding down their windows and shouting, and passing at speed and too closely, she told the committee.
But unlike accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users, such incidents involving horses were not captured in the statistics.
When she had asked NZTA for data, said said all it could tell her was that it had issued 13 infringements in 13 years, for failing to take care around a ridden animal or stock.
“When someone comes so close they touch your stirrup, or they hoot their horn as they go past ... it’s the abuse - it’s everywhere."
In a case down south, a truck driver refused to slow down despite hand signals and the rider fell off just in front of him, she said.
She had asked the road safety director for NZ Police to look at providing a ‘tick-box’ for horse-riders in incident reports, Ms McLean said.
“It’s a small, low-cost measure that would allow us to have some proper data, an informed understanding of what’s happening out there on the roads, and in turn some targeted road safety messaging.”
She was motivated to become a safety advocate by her own experience at the age of 25, when she fractured her skull in a near-fatal riding accident on a Kaiapoi road.
“I lost all memory of my childhood; my sense of taste and smell is gone forever. I was in a coma for week, I lost my career and it’s taken me 16 years to fully recover,” she told LDR.
Her accident had not been caused by a car: her horse had shied and thrown her when a piece of paper on the verge moved suddenly in the wind.
But the incident was a grim reminder of what could happen if a horse were startled, she said.
The UK and Australia had recently changed their road codes to give drivers explicit instructions on passing horses.
“It needs to be explicit. We can’t assume people just get it anymore. Common sense is not a thing. We actually have to tell people what we require, to pass a horse wide and slow - wide is two metres.”
A total of 37 organisations were now endorsing her campaign, including police, trucking companies, pony clubs and 10 other regional councils, McLean told the committee.
Transport Committee chairperson Peter Ewen was supportive of Ms McLeans safety campaign.
“In rural New Zealand we have a lot of narrow roads, and we do have riders on them – I would like to think that courtesy is given to those riders."
Regional council chairperson Peter Haddock said he sympathised with the cause but had reservations about riders on state highways.
“I would encourage it on low volume council roads but would struggle to support riding on highways where you’ve got traffic following closely behind.
“It’s difficult to find you suddenly have a horse in front of you and slowly pass it and go from 100kphs to 10kphs. It’s a dangerous situation."
McLean said horse riders did not want to ride on highways, and accidents were happening on 50kph local roads.
She appealed to West Coast mayors and chairs present to consider horse riders when they built shared pathways like cycle trails.
“We don’t need a hard surface, just a bit of dirt or grass at the side.”
The Transport Committee agreed to draft a letter to the national transport authorities, endorsing McLean’s safety campaign but stating its reservations about horses on highways.
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