Councillor Robert Lee was president of the Saving Springfield group. Photo / Laura Smith
A Rotorua councillor has called a sports strategy “ideological garbage” and says it is a bid to continue shelved plans for a sports precinct on a golf course.
The mayor says she is “disappointed” with his “consistent narrative” and claims he is thinking more about his backyard than the wider district’s needs.
Rotorua Lakes Council last Wednesday adopted the Play, Active Recreation and Sport Strategy.
The council asked RSL Consultancy to develop the strategy in 2022. It is aimed to guide future investment.
It had previously worked on plans for a Westbrook Sports and Recreation Precinct – a project that would incorporate several reserves, Rotorua International Stadium, Westbrook netball courts and the Springfield Golf Course into a sports hub, with the potential for housing to also be built on the golf course land.
The Saving Springfield group was formed and collected 5017 signatures on a petition asking the council to declare the golf course a taonga and continue its lease when the old one expired.
Councillor Robert Lee was president of the lobby group and fellow councillor Don Paterson campaigned to stop the project. Both live near the course. They were elected to the council in 2022.
The golf course is not named in the new strategy.
In a long-term plan 2024-34 workshop in October last year, then-interim council chief executive Gina Rangi said the precinct proposal was not in the present council’s strategy.
In last Wednesday’s infrastructure and environment committee meeting, Lee asked active and engaged communities manager Rob Pitkethley if the public had been consulted on the strategy.
Pitkethley said it went through a full public survey process that produced key themes, “which were then recirculated and communicated”.
Lee referred to a strategy aim for the council to work with the National Māori Sports Authority to grow Rotorua as the preferred home of Māori cultural sporting tournaments, a phrase he said could have been “copied and pasted” from the precinct proposal and which he said was the “reason for killing the golf course”.
Chairwoman Karen Barker said Lee was making assumptions and reminded him the strategy was a high-level document.
After the meeting, Lee provided further comment to Local Democracy Reporting.
“The context is that last month the council voted, by the narrowest of margins, to offer the Springfield Golf Club with a lease that includes an Alternative Use clause.”
It was this clause that worried him because sports fields are one of the alternative uses under the clause, and this was why he believed the strategy was a continuation of the old.
Lee said the council should not consider replacing a golf course where 100% of the maintenance costs were covered with sports fields that would have to be maintained for larger tournaments by the council at ratepayer cost.
At the meeting, mayor Tania Tapsell expressed disappointment that “one councillor used this opportunity for a district-wide approach to specifically mention his backyard and Springfield Golf Club”.
It was a consistent narrative, she said, and she was also concerned there was a perceived conflict of interest “that could come from living right next to that golf course”, but asking questions as to whether the club was consulted and the petition considered.
“And the very disrespectful comments that Māori sports strategies are killing the golf course. I want to remind councillors we are here to benefit the entire district and act in the best interests of everyone.”
Tapsell also recounted the pride she had in elected members when the council agreed, following the 2022 election, to stop seven reserves being sold for housing at its first meeting.
She said it showed how valuable green spaces were and this strategy was an opportunity to look at how it could best use limited resources to improve the parks and reserves it had.
Tapsell said there were future financial challenges and while there was “high demand” for more sports fields, the community was in a cost-of-living crisis and ensuring affordability and access would need to be considered when looking at fees and charges.
Councillor Fisher Wang expressed similar disappointment and said the strategy before them replaced the one Lee was worried about.
Lee said he would like to see Rotorua as the home of Māori sporting and cultural tournaments. It became problematic when it “spread” to the golf course, he said.
Lee believed the strategy was another that supported the “line of thinking” that led to the Westbrook precinct plans.
“I am unable to support this ideological garbage, quite frankly.”
Tapsell called this disrespectful, offensive and misrepresentation.
Councillors Paterson and Lee voted against adopting the strategy.
Pitkethley said about 10,000 people took part in winter sports and 5000 in summer. Many lived in the city for its offerings, it attracted visitors, and provided community and economic wellbeing.
Future demand would not be met with the facilities it had now, however, with some aged and lacking in capacity.
Another challenge was a lack of participation by underprivileged communities.
Pitkethley said barriers could be removed, including through changes to public transport options. Other ways were to assess if there were enough playgrounds in certain areas and how accessible they were.
He said the plan cost about $103,000 to develop, which Sport New Zealand contributed to.
Part of the plan included undertaking a feasibility assessment on ways to improve indoor court provision.
Options included repurposing the Energy Events Centre to primarily serve community sport,
a new multi-court indoor facility purpose-built for sport, or covered outdoor courts.
It would also look to improve field capacity.
Laura Smith is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. She previously reported general news for the Otago Daily Times and Southland Express and has been a journalist since 2019.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.