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Tuesday • June 24 • 2014 PHONE: 09 235 78 35 FAX: 09 235 78 34
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INSIDE THIS WEEK: PG 17 - 19
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VOL 26 • NO.24
SUN
YES, PAINLESS DENTAL CARE
That's the promise we make in 2014 at FRANKLIN DENTAL - here to serve you!
The Franklin Dental Centre 203 KING STREET, PUKEKOHE Ph 238 9656 A/HRS 235 7409
Call in & compare our fees You’ll be very pleased you did!
Special award for story A local schoolgirl’s touching story about how she thinks of a fellow schoolmate as ‘her hero’ was recognised with an award last week. PAGE
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College Glitz and Glam Dressed to the nines, Waiuku College students enjoyed a successful school ball on Saturday evening. PAGE
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Momentous milestone It was a spectacular day for Waiuku Rugby on Saturday afternoon as Sponsor’s Day was held and Sosefo Kata played his 250th match for the premiers. PAGE
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CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS
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End of an era for Waipipi Bird Park Over 13 years of work to create an idyllic exotic and native bird park at Waipipi came to an end on Sunday as owners Ron and Amily Peake closed the popular park. The couple, who will retire to Whangarei, say what started out as a hobby at Glenbrook grew into a fully-fledged bid park created from bare farmland on what was originally a 16-acre block. 10 acres of that block was sold to finance the park, and building started in 2004 on a property that would eventually home over 300 birds.
Thousands of local school children have visited the park since it opened, and Ron and Amily estimate that there have been over 30,000 visitors in total over the past 10 years, many returning several times. For many of those visitors, one of the highlights of any visit has been interacting with the cheeky Sulphur Crested Coackatoo ‘Charlie’, who is probably one of the most photographed birds in the country! Charlie is to go to the Whitford Bird Garden, while other birds are going to Whangarei and other places
throughout the upper North Island. The couple say they will miss the property they have developed - with support from local groups and Trees for Survival they have planted over 7000 trees around the estuary edge - but say the workload was just too large. And after more than 60 years of working with birds, Ron isn’t even keeping one as he readies himself to enjoy some fishing. “No more birds now,” Amily laughs - “just me, I’m his only one!”
No public consultation over 310,000-hen farm A group of Patumahoe residents are considering a public meeting to consider a high court challenge against an Auckland Council decision to publicly notify an application for what would be Franklin’s largest intensive egg-producing farm. Craddock Farms have proposed to establish an egg layer farm of up to 310,000 birds, across 10 sheds, on a Patumahoe Road site around 2km from
the Patumahoe Village. The scale of the operation, its proximity to the village, and concerns over traffic volume, odours and pests, led some local residents to believe the application should be publicly notified, to enable those who felt they may be adversely affected to make submissions to the consent process. However, a council planning co-odinator has told the group
that Council believes any adverse affects from the operation would be ‘no more than minor’, and therefore Council decided to process the application as a ‘limited notification’, meaning only four adjoining property owners would be notified and would be able to lodge a submission to the proposal should they wish to. The council planner said this meant that, ‘while there may be
a degree of concern within the community’, the Council would only be able to take into account any submission received by those four neighbours. For some residents of the village, this is not good enough, and they are looking at calling a public meeting in the near future to decide whether to challenge the decision. This will require seeking a judicial review through the New Zealand High Court.
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43 QUEEN ST, WAIUKU • PH 235 9711 • SAT: 9 - 4 • SUN: 10 - 3
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