our place
Woodlands Park gets food pantry A new Woodlands Park Free Food Pantry (also known as pataka kai) has been installed outside 20 Minnehaha Avenue (next door to the kindergarten). Free Food Pantries are resident-led, crowd-sourced solutions to immediate and local needs, rescuing food and encouraging sharing between neighbours to strengthen communities. Whether you need food or have food to share, a free food pantry facilitates neighbours helping neighbours. The idea is to take what you need and leave what you can. The Pantry is a community effort and is open 24/7 with no appointment required, no form filling, no criteria, no donation tin and no money exchanged. Local resident Tracy Wahrlich who is coordinating this new initiative says “if you need something, help yourself and if you can leave something, know that your community thanks you. Those who wish to contribute may do so whenever convenient.” The pantry is only for food, non-perishable, shelf-stable and fruit and veggies from your garden. Do not leave pre-cooked or hot food and ensure that food you drop off is in a condition that you would eat yourself. Tinned and shelf-stable packet food is the best. Tracy is looking for contacts in the community who can secure weekly donations of rescued produce and shelf-stable food that would otherwise be thrown away. For more information, the pantry is on Facebook (search for Woodlands Park Free Food Pantry) and Instagram (#woodlandsparkfreefoodpantry) or you can email Tracy on tracywahrlich@icloud.com.
Watercare Services has begun the restoration of the old Nihotupu filter station. The 1980s 3-level office addition to the north of the building has been demolished with the intention of making the heritage building more secure. Last summer, some of the wooden structures at the rear of the addition were set alight by vandals. The future purpose of the historic building at the junction of Scenic Drive, Woodlands Park Road and Exhibition Drive is yet to be finalised although many ideas have been suggested, including a café and a museum. What would you like to see there? Let The Fringe know by emailing info@ fringemedia.co.nz or writing to PO Box 60-469, Titirangi.
‘The system is the problem’ Good maintenance is one of the keys to Auckland’s long-term financial stability. It’s not Covid-19 stopping Council from making ends meet, nor is it climate change causing our drains to overflow. It’s Council’s own fault. The cancellation of scheduled maintenance in favour of only responding to complaints about maintenance issues (deceptively named ‘outcomes based maintenance’) is just reducing maintenance spending in the false belief this saves money when it really just drives up capital expenditure. A lot of Council’s capital costs are a result of a lack of maintenance. This is particularly true in the areas of roading and drainage. Council has lost touch with the practical actions of cleaning drains and fixing roads because they no longer directly employ the people doing these jobs. Of course there are good knowledgeable people within Council, but they’re constrained by (amongst other things) risk management procedures where the procedural costs have not been evaluated against the level of risk, and this is leading to extraordinary sums of money being needed for small and simple maintenance. To make matters worse Council is both the procurer looking for the lowest price, and in most cases also the regulator looking for the highest standard.
please support our advertisers – they support us
Council then front-loads bulk funding, but as the contract period progresses Council applies variations, often by way of dictating changes to required work practices, but due to their remoteness from the practical work Council fails to recognise and/or understand the extra costs the contractors incur. This results in maintenance jobs being divided into smaller and smaller portions, each being done by single action, lowest price subcontractors with little or no understanding of each other’s operational roles. To paraphrase, ‘the system is the problem’. So how do we fix it? Well, in my humble opinion, Council needs to set a maximum geographic size for ‘maintenance contract areas’ regardless of population density and manage maintenance services within each area with a dedicated team that has its own procurement budget. These locally based teams should oversee a wider range of maintenance problems on behalf of the entire Council family, coordinating with CCO’s and utility providers. Auckland Council regularly trumpets the virtues of emergency preparedness, and of building resilient communities, These objectives will never be achieved without well-maintained infrastructure. – Ken Turner
The Fringe SEPTEMBER 2020
5
