A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
In the weekend I walked the Gisborne Hospital grounds and was shocked and dismayed at what an eyesore it was.
Weeds were overgrown along the boundary, broken fittings had been dumped under trees and weeds had grown around them. What was once a greenhouse area with raised gardens has now
been left. The glasshouses are broken and a bird bath, wrought iron furniture, pots and potting mix have just been abandoned. What were once doctors’ houses are now empty. Why is this?
Gisborne has a housing shortage. Income generated from renting these would easily pay the wages of a genuine gardener, not just a cheap contractor.
Then there is the Morris Adair building: who owns this? The hospital obviously still uses it, by the looks of it, as a dumping place. The front entrance has file boxes — shouldn’t they be in secure storage? One room is full of monitors or TVs — why weren’t these sold or dumped when the e-waste programme was running? Another has baby cots and incubators — could they not have been offered to another hospital?
But most damning of all, in the security booth at the main entrance in full view, was a bottle of Woodstock. It may be empty now, but what sort of message does this send to the public and visitors?
