EDITORIAL: Council parking up wrong tree

Kathy Webb
First it was the pods. Generally loathed and ridiculed, their presence is still anathema to many, and tolerated only because mass lavender hides them from view for most of the year.
There will be no such escape from the latest installation planned for Havelock North by the Hastings District Council. The mechanical monsters to be planted around the central village will command attention straight from the wallets of motorists.
Pay and display is the name of the game. And the introduction of the cumbersome parking meters, despite the pleadings of Havelock residents and business-owners, is being done to "fix" a problem that doesn't yet exist.
The council admits there is no problem with parking at Havelock at the moment. However, it says, a traffic study shows the village might need another 35 parking spaces in five years, and preparations to pay for them must begin immediately.
The theory is that pay-and-display machines will chivvy along the shoppers and turn over the traffic more regularly, thereby warding off the potential for traffic congestion, and perhaps delaying the need for more spaces.
Havelock residents and businesses have petitioned and lobbied the council to set up a targeted rate on Havelock properties to pay for the new carparks, but their pleadings have now been formally rejected, with the council insisting that motorists must be the ones to pay.
Why? Because the requisite "consultation" to impose a targeted rate has not been done.
Were villagers asleep when they were consulted about parking meters? No one seems to remember the occasion.
Councillor Richard Jones was the only councillor to fight meters when councillors took a vote on Tuesday. Fellow Havelock ward councillor Dinah Williams voted in favour of them, saying it wouldn't be fair for people who walk to the shops to pay for carparking through their rates.
The 35 new carparks are estimated to cost $16,000 each - a total of $560,000. But installing 25 pay-and-display meters to pay for them will mean an immediate capital outlay of $125,000 and the establishment of a whole new parking bureaucracy for Havelock.
T he council also says Hastings is funding Havelock's carparking, and meters at Havelock would redress this imbalance. But such an argument struggles for credibility when the council collects huge amounts in general rates from Havelock properties each year.
It needs to explain why it cannot ring-fence a portion of that money to pay for carparking. It could even add in the cost of a part-time warden to ensure parking criminals are not staying too long in the best spaces.
And before the council signs the order form for 25 pay-and-display machines from America, it would do well to pause and consider whether it has properly considered the wider implications of a scheme that might look good on paper but be the end of something Havelock people sincerely value.
They will not easily forgive the council for taking it away.
The freedom to park, to dally, to change plans without having to rush back to feed a meter or curtail an expedition or appointment, as happens in Hastings, is a rare luxury in an urban area. The same can be said for the absence of parking tickets to ruin a day when your schedule falls out of sync with a parking meter.
Free parking is one of the pleasant, relaxing features about shopping, doing business and spending time in Havelock's village. It's why some choose Havelock over Hastings. It's why Havelock business-owners don't want meters. It's why residents have pleaded and petitioned to be allowed to pay a special rate instead.
Mayor Lawrence Yule suspects residents do not realise a targeted carparking rate could be $40 to $50 a year, but for most household budgets, $1 a week extra in rates would be a better deal than $1 an hour for a meter.