White crosses along SH2 from Te Puna to Pahoia. Photo / George Novak
White crosses along SH2 from Te Puna to Pahoia. Photo / George Novak
The Bay of Plenty Times is looking back at the stories of 2021. Here's what made headlines in June.
June 3
Women's shelter Hine Ngākau was in "desperate" need of funding - $64,800 to be exact - to operate every night.
Hine Ngākau is the newest branch under the HeKaupapa Kotahitanga Trust umbrella which was formed three years ago to help advocate for single homeless women in Tauranga Moana.
It opens only for the winter, and is only able to open five nights a week from Sunday to Thursday, because the trust can't afford to pay for security on Friday and Saturday nights.
He Kaupapa Kotahitanga chairwoman Tania Lewis-Rickard said they needed a permanent building in the CBD and "massive funding to employ clinical staff, proper security, and night staff at living wage rates".
Transport Minister Michael Wood and Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson announced the Government would no longer fund stage 2 of the project, from Te Puna to Ōmokoroa.
The defunding sparked anger, upset and fury from those who have fought long and hard for improvements to the deadly section of highway - including Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller, who described it as ''disgraceful''.
White crosses along SH2 from Te Puna to Pahoia. Photo / George Novak
June 10
Children desperate for counselling were waiting up to six weeks to get help while some schools were picking up the tab to pay for their own experts as mental health and wellbeing issues spiral, the Bay of Plenty Times revealed.
A health board chief acknowledged the wait lists for mental health support for children were "significant and growing", while primary and intermediate schools say they're doing what they can with what little they have.
Meanwhile, a Budget 2021 funding boost for a programme targeting mental health support for 5 to 12-year-olds was welcomed by those on the frontline.
These are the chilling words a doctor told Geri Stantiall six years ago. She was in her late 30s when she heard the news: There was no way to reverse her diabetes.
It was 2015 and Geri had been battling type 2 diabetes since high school.
Now, aged 43, blind in one eye and unable to walk unaided, she sits in Tauranga Hospital's renal unit three days a week, for five hours each time, on dialysis.
Geri (Geraldine) Stantiall, who is receiving dialysis three times a week at the Tauranga Hospital renal unit. Photo / George Novak
June 14
Tauranga's Waipuna Hospice was one of three Bay of Plenty hospices to announce it would not offer assisted dying services when the End of Life Choice Act came into force in November.
Under the act a person who wishes to receive assisted dying and thinks they meet the eligibility criteria can ask a health practitioner about the process.
Health practitioners cannot raise assisted dying with a patient - the patient must raise the issue themselves first.
Tauranga's Waipuna Hospice chief executive Richard Thurlow said the organisation had chosen to make a "conscientious objection" to the act.
"Offering euthanasia services does not fit with the desired aims of our organisation and to do so would cause difficulties for medical practitioners and our nursing practitioners."
Details of a new billion-dollar town centre planned for in Pāpāmoa East that will be four times the size of Bayfair Shopping Centre and surrounded by 11,000 new homes were revealed.
The Sands Town Centre will be mixed-use, with stage one including a $100 million aquatic centre with a 50m Olympic-sized pool, a large health hub and retirement village.
A large supermarket and retail outlet was also planned for the centre, around which 11,000 new homes are planned to be built.
Nathan York, chief executive of town centre developers Bluehaven Group, gave his submission to the Tauranga City Council's Long-term Plan 2021-2031 on Wednesday. Commissioners were given a sneak preview of what the new town centre and aquatic centre would look like.
"It is over 232,000sq m of consented space and will be four times the size of Bayfair," York said.
An artist impression of what The Sands Town Centre will look like. Photo / Supplied
June 22
Trustpower customers were assured they would see "no change to what they experience today" and staff won't be affected by the sale of the company's retail arm.
Mercury NZ Limited announced the two businesses had entered into a binding agreement, which would see Mercury acquire Trustpower for $441 million conditional on the restructure of the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust (TECT) and approval from Trustpower shareholders and the Commerce Commission.
Mercury expected to meet the sale conditions by the end of the year. (2021)
In a briefing for analysts, investors and media yesterday morning, Mercury chief executive Vince Hawksworth said the Trustpower brand "comes with the transaction".
"Trustpower customers will, on day one, see no change to what they experience today," he said.
Trustpower's headquarters in Durham St. Photo / NZME
June 24
It was a deal "too good to resist".
But when a Tauranga businessman agreed to sell $900,000 in shares in his company, little did he know he was laundering money for drug dealers involved in the second-largest P importation in New Zealand's history - a 500kg haul worth up to $150 million.
A judge says Samuel Rhys Brooking was reckless as to the source of the money, but his lawyer says Brooking "didn't see" the criminal link coming and has lost almost everything as a result.
In the Tauranga District Court in June, Brooking was sentenced to a year of home detention on one charge of money laundering.
Brooking unknowingly laundered drug money in 2019 when two men involved in the importation bought $900,000 worth of shares in his health product company.
