LETTERS & EMAILS

STOP THE THEFT, FIX THE SEWAGE, GOFF! Today, I walked the length of Chester Avenue in Westmere, where Auckland Transport’s contractor ‘Downer’ are tearing up the street gutters and stealing the curbstones.

For the last 15 years I have been concerned by the theft of the heritage curbstones from our streets across Auckland. Today was proof of the long term strategy of Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and their contractors to remove the bluestones and replace them with inferior concrete slurry and cheap concrete cast curbstones. Who cares I hear your cry? I do, because, first they steal the blue stones worth $45 each, then export or sell them on Trademe.

Meanwhile, the contractors charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a job that is so bad it needs replacing every seven years! Is this cost effective? Why do we tolerate such poor workmanship? Why is no one looking into this fraud? Initially they took the bluestones underground and put the bluestone back on top! Now the contractors just steal them whether they are above or below ground.

Not content to dig up Chester Avenue, they start clawing up Garnet Road, which was done five years ago! Stop this abuse of public assets and funds! STOP the theft of our heritage and fix the sewage system, Goff! Lisa Prager, Westmere

IT’S OFFICIAL... I’M A RAT-RUNNER! When I moved to Curran Street I found that my safest and most convenient route west was along Sarsfield Street and up Wallace Street, which has traffic lights at the top. This apparently made me a rat-runner.

Then came the expensive disruption known as ‘traffic calming’, designed to discourage motorists and provide a paradise for cyclists and pedestrians. The first aim succeeded brilliantly as I now prefer to make the right turn up Curran Street and join the Jervois Road traffic.

I occasionally revert to my rodent status and endure the bumpy unpleasantness of Sarsfield and Wallace Streets. Sometimes I notice a pair of cyclists and I once spotted a pedestrian. Alan Tomlinson, Herne Bay RELATIONSHIP WITH JAPAN THREATENED BY CALLING THEIR NATIONAL TREE A PEST In 2017, the ‘Fukuoka Garden’ in Western Springs Lakeside Park opened as a tribute to Auckland City’s sister city relationship with Fukuoka in Japan. The Auckland Council article, entitled, Oasis in Central Auckland Blooms Again, refers to the flowering of the national tree of Japan, the Cherry Blossom.

After 30 years, this reciprocal relationship with Japan is now under threat because Auckland Council Environment and Climate Change Committee have just declared the ‘Japanese Flowering Cherry Tree’ (Prunus Serrulata) a ‘pest species’. This is different from ‘Taiwanese Cherry’ (Prunus Campanulate) that has been on the pest register for some time.

Fukuoka has an ‘Aotearoa Garden’ celebrating this relationship too. Imagine for a moment if Japan declared the Kowhai, Kauri, or Pohutakawa a ‘pest species’! To start with, the Japanese are far too polite to contemplate anything that outrageously rude, and secondly, we would be so offended that it would probably even hinder our trading relationship!

Several locations with Japanese flowering cherry trees around Auckland are popular during their blooming for wedding photos and for food for native nectar feeding birds. I say we owe an apology to the Japanese people, especially on behalf of the tui. Gael Baldock, Community Advocate

THE WESTERN SPRINGS FOREST One of the issues that has plagued the process that has resulted in the decision to fell the Western Springs Forest has been the late delivery of, or not supplying requested information.

There is a concern by many that the felling of the trees will destroy the existing native undergrowth that in some areas is 70 years old. This can be mitigated by felling each tree in small sections and carefully lowering these to the ground. This is called ‘sectional felling’. At the meeting of 17 March, four members of the Board requested that the Council report on this option. Even though the report was requested in the public forum, it was presented verbally to a Board workshop which the public cannot attend. At the Waitemata Local Board meeting of 3 November, four members resolved that each tree be felled in one section.

HEALTHY WATERS - YEAH RIGHT! I’m sure other St. Mary’s Bay residents are grateful to Herne Bay residents as we certainly are for allowing Auckland Council (“Healthy Waters”) to discharge sewage overflows on their side of the bridge instead of ours. Bill Allen, St Mary’s Bay Once again, the reasons supporting this decision “were discussed under the sheets” in workshop. What else happens “under those sheets” in workshop meetings that we, the public, never find out about? It’s time these workshops were recorded and open to the public. Keith McConnell, www.keithforwaitemata.com