EDITORIAL: Let's build toward one Hawke's Bay

PAUL TAGGART
Necessity is the mother of invention, and what is in dire need of inventing now is a more efficient system for dealing with Hawke's Bay building consents.
Builders in Hastings are having projects stalled for up to 10 weeks, with one business owner even looking at the idea of building homes in Napier and then moving them to Hastings as a way round the bottleneck.
Hastings District Council's manager of resource management, Mike Maguire, said staff were working hard to keep pace with the property boom, and building inspectors had been "knocked over" by a surge in applications in the past four months.
But let's just back up for a second.
A year ago, Hawke's Bay Master Builders' president Leno Federico raised his members' concerns about delays at a high-level meeting with the council.
Yet now the situation is even worse.
Sure, there's been a building boom and there may well be increased activity as people try to beat a coming interest rate increase.
But surely the bean-counters and analysts in the council offices can see these things coming and plan for them, rather than having Mr Maguire wringing his hands when his team has been swamped with work.
After all, the council has the vision to fly in overseas experts, hold a charrette and look at changing the district plan to help a developer build hundreds of houses at Ocean Beach.
Why not give the companies that have been building homes in the Bay for years similar support by simply ensuring their applications are processed in reasonable time?
The irony is that in Napier applications are being turned round within four weeks to meet guidelines set by the Building Industry Authority.
The building pressure may not be so high in Napier, but surely it would be better if the two departments could help each other out during peaks such as Hastings is experiencing at present.
Better still would be a combined planning department or, ultimately, one council which would put Hawke's Bay first and break down the existing parochialism.
And it is not only builders who would benefit. Take the two cities' libraries.
If a book is in stock in Napier, but isn't in Hastings, there is a process of inter-city loans, with all the associated paper work. Why? Surely the two communities have enough in common to be able to pool their books and run one Hawke's Bay library service?
The cities will come together one day, as Banks Peninsula and Christchurch voted to do at the weekend, to the benefit of all ratepayers as well as frustrated builders and book- lovers. It is just sad that it is taking so long.