An extraordinary council meeting "to address the proposed Oruku development" will take place this Thursday.
An extraordinary council meeting "to address the proposed Oruku development" will take place this Thursday.
Whangārei's $250 million Oruku Landing development is back on the agenda.
Whangārei deputy mayor Greg Innes and councillors Gavin Benney, Vince Cocurullo, Ken Couper, Phil Halse and Carol Peters have forced an extraordinary council meeting "to address the proposed Oruku development".
The councillors used Whangārei District Council (WDC) standing ordersto call for the meeting, which will be on Thursday.
The standing orders allow for councillors to request an extraordinary council meeting if "not less than one-third of the total membership of the council" makes that call.
In November, the WDC voted nine to five to abandon the $136 million Oruku conference and event centre - part of the bigger private developer’s Oruku Landing development - after months of controversy that polarised the community.
Five per cent of Whangārei’s population put 5000-plus submissions during consultation about whether the WDC should go ahead with the conference and event centre. About 80 per cent of those were against the WDC putting millions into doing so, thereby committing ratepayers to major rates increases over and above forecast long-term budgets.
Initially, the centre was to be jointly funded with $60 million from the Government, $6m from the Northland Regional Council (NRC) and at least $57m from the WDC. It was to be part of the bigger, private developer’s Oruku Landing hotel and apartment development.
The sextet’s letter to WDC chief executive Rob Forlong calling for the extraordinary meeting lists seven councillors’ names - but only six have signed. Cr Jayne Golightly’s name is also on the list but unsigned, meaning she is therefore not a signatory to the extraordinary meeting call.
Innes and Crs Benney, Cocurullo, Couper and Halse voted against the council pulling out of committing to the Oruku conference and event centre during a sometimes tense two-hour meeting in November. Cr Peters voted in favour of doing so.
Mayor Sheryl Mai and councillors Nick Connop, Tricia Cutforth, Shelley Deeming, Jayne Golightly, Greg Martin, Anna Murphy, Peters and Simon Reid voted to abandon the Oruku Landing conference and event centre.
Mai said at the time she accepted the centre proposal was sincere and visionary but she did not want to see involvement with the centre potentially put the council and its ratepayers at risk. She said council research had shown this would appear to have been the case with the proposal.
The Whangārei District Council received more than 5000 submissions during consultation about the proposed development. Photo / Tania Whyte
The sextet's call comes six months ahead of the October local government elections. Mai and Cutforth have already indicated they will not be standing again.
Cocurullo and Couper have both said they are standing as 2022 Whangārei mayoral candidates.
Cocurullo heads the list of six councillors who have put the Oruku development in the city's lower Town Basin back on the agenda with the extraordinary meeting request.
In November, Couper spoke in favour of the council not withdrawing from its Oruku conference and event centre involvement, with a reduced-budget option.
He told the meeting private developers had looked at the WDC’s plans for the future and how they could work within those plans. They had put a lot of effort into the project and attracted government shovel-ready funding when the council had not been successful in doing so.
The site for the Oruku Landing project in Riverside Drive, Whangārei. Photo / Tania Whyte
It represented a partnership between the council, government, and private developers working to provide a stimulus for the local economy, he said.
This was particularly important, given the Marsden Point oil refinery was closing.
It had brought the opportunity to build resilience into Whangārei, which had a population that was increasing by 10,000 people every five years.
The forced extraordinary meeting comes whilst the WDC is in the middle of a month’s public consultation over its 2022-20223 Annual Plan. This allows the public to give feedback on major budget changes over and above those initially forecast in longer-term planning.
• Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
