City Members Protest At Objections To Plan

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 6

City Members Protest At Objections To Plan

Three City Council members of the Christchurch Regional Planning Authority took exception yesterday to the authority’s objections to the council’s district planning scheme—they occupied 26 closely-typed foolscap pages—but the chairman of the authority, who is also chairman of the council’s town planning committee (Mr G. D. Griffiths) said he welcomed the objections, many of which would disappear when they were examined by council officers.

The protesting City Council representatives! were chided as being un-1 duly sensitive by other members of the authority, including two Waimairi County Council representatives who said they would welcome a close constructive scrutiny of their scheme when it came up for review.

Mr M. R. Carter led the! protests, and said he did not! see how members of the authority could understand the objections when many of them did not have the council’s scheme. “As a member of the authority I am not prepared to be a mere rubber stamp,” he said. “This to some extent is a vote of no confidence in our council’s planning staff and the engineer. If this goes through there will be continual friction between officers.” . J J Other main centres did not [ have a similar problem. Mr Carter said, and it seemed that the authority had become planners to plan the planners.

Harmony Sought Some of the objections appeared to be giving the council instruction what it should do, Mr E. B. E. Taylor said. In the interests of harmony, the authority should adopt a more reconciliatory attitude.

A lot of trivial things were included in the objections, and they should not have been produced, Mr G. D. Hattaway said. If tfie objections were all put in they would have to be advertised, then considered by a panel of the council and perhaps later by the Town and Country Planning Appeal board, which would coSt the ratepayers money. The council would be unique If it had not made some mistakes, but many of the matters raised could have been settled at officer level, he said. He proposed that the objections should be “thrown out” as they were a waste of money in their present form. The City Engineer (Mr P. G. Scoular), who said he had some difficulty in deciding which hat to wear—he is also chairman of the authority’s technical advisory com-mittee-said the original objections produced by the authority’s officers would have been twice as thick as they were yesterday. However, the examination was a valuable check on the council officers and many items were being considered by council staff and could result in alterations to the scheme, he skid. What would be left were largely matters of opinion. Principle Involved Dr W. R. Holmes said a principle was involved. “Should we ask our staff to prostitute their views for the sake of expediency?” he asked. “Whatever function this authority has, it has an over-all supervisory function. If there are 26 pages of things about which our staff are uneasy we must take serious notice.” Waimairi would be reviewing its scheme and he would be happy to see constructive criticism raised. Mr R. C. Neville said, if he' Cwas a Christchurch resident he would be relieved to think that someone was endeavouring to correct the. scheme. He was supported by his chairman (Mr D. B. 'Rich), who said the

were being unduly sensitive. As chairman of the council’s town planning commit- ! tee, he was pleased that someone had examined the scheme, Mr Griffiths said. The objections would be considered fully by the council, and he

i thought a majority of them would be worked into the district scheme. The authority agreed to the objections, but said it would withdraw any on which the authority and the council agreed.