The Auckland Regional Council was accused yesterday of shifting the goalposts for planning how many people will live in Orewa in the next 50 years.
Weeks of controversy and protest in the town about rumours of 20-25 high-rise towers on the way came to a head yesterday withRodney District councillors calling on the ARC to clarify conflicting statements regarding the growth strategy for Orewa.
At a special council meeting, which drew a crowd of residents, strategy and policy chairwoman Penny Webster said she was called a liar many times when she spoke to the crowd at a protest meeting a week ago.
"But we have been bombarded by the ARC telling us we are not doing enough about more intensive housing and building around transport nodes."
Mrs Webster said ARC deputy chairwoman Christine Rose had said the ARC was not forcing growth on Orewa but she had evidence it was.
Mrs Webster read an email from former ARC planning director Craig Shearer. In it, Mr Shearer says that when the Regional Growth Strategy was formed in the late 1990s Rodney councillors did not want any more growth because it was causing too many headaches.
"They were forced to take more growth (all the districts agreed it could not be stopped). In fact the strategy plans an increased Rodney district population from 66,000 in 1996 to 177,000 in 2050."
Mr Shearer says the ARC's proposed plan change 6 to the regional policy statement listed Orewa as a sub regional centre that should have 60 dwellings per hectare and 300 employees per hectare.
"That is fairly high density.
"I don't think there is any doubt that the ARC is forcing growth on Orewa as a high-density node," says Mr Shearer.
But Mrs Rose yesterday stood by her comment that the ARC was not forcing growth on Orewa, which the town's draft master plan wants to grow from 5600 residents to 14,500 by 2050.
Mrs Rose told councillors that growth would happen anyway but the ARC wanted it to be sustainable.
