A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
I was interested, but not surprised, that TV coverage of the Tolaga Bay flood meeting was disallowed. Was it at the public or council’s request?
Another question, after previously reporting in a Q&A forum — where the question was how often does the council monitor consents? — the reply was,
“With the rapid increase in numbers of forestry consents we have not been able to monitor as much as we would have liked to . . . . We now have around 1250 active forestry consents”.
In Thursday’s Herald report on the meeting, chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann said there were “sufficient staff to handle the 1250 active forestry consents”. In around 10 days we have gone from being under-resourced for managing 1250 forestry consents to now having sufficient staff to handle them. What changed in such a short time frame?
Peter Millar
Footnote from Ed: A council spokeswoman advised that the Tolaga Bay community requested a local man be the only one to film the meeting, so other requests were declined. Minutes of the meeting, and the answer to questions about resourcing, will be emailed out to community contacts (and The Herald) today.
