No stay of execution for trust despite support

Nearly 40 supporters of the Devonport Peninsula Trust who fronted up to a crucial meeting with a 600-signature petition could not save the organisation from the council funding axe.

After listening to trust supporters for an hour of its main monthly meeting last week, the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board unanimously confirmed its defunding of the organisation.

The charitable trust has lost its annual funding to deliver community events and support services. For the financial year to last month, this amounted to $128,000.

Its three part-time staff have already been given notice. Their last main task was the coordination of local Matariki celebrations.

The trust was granted $25,000 by the board, however, after a last-ditch submission from trust chair Iain Rea, who asked for the money to help finish the year’s scheduled trust events. These include youth and senior forums, the Halloween Trail in

Bayswater and play programmes.

Member Gavin Busch asked what would happen if the trust – whose staff finish up at the end of August – could not deliver the events. Auckland Council staff said agreements required money to be returned if work was not done.

The board rejected another proposal by Rea that the trust manage the new community coordinator role the board is setting up for the peninsula.

But it voted to transfer the $25,000 for final trust activities from funding for the coordinator, who is being called a community “activator”, reducing that position’s first-year allocation to $73,000.

Outside the meeting, Rea told the Flagstaff the aim was to keep the trust going in the longer term.

The issue for its volunteer board will be to find funding.

Acknowledging the turnout of trust supporters and the trust’s years of valuable work, local-board chair Toni van Tonder said the board had 60,000 people to think about.

Other areas needed support, she said. The funding shift was prompted by a realisation that with council budget cuts and further uncertainty still ahead, the trust model was no longer sustainable.

The new coordinator will be based at the Devonport Community House. The board has also defunded the Takapuna North Community Trust, and will establish another coordinator position at the Sunnynook Community Centre for its northern area.

Van Tonder said the board had listened to community feedback that prioritised provision of activities well below environmental restoration, water quality, arts and community programmes and services, and libraries.

Great local events had been delivered in the past by a single coordinator, she noted, hoping locals would still also aid this.

• Other budget decisions, page 34