Waimea Weekly
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Your Community Newspaper
Wednesday 31 July 2013
Dancers take the floor
Page 8
Champions
Housing trust skips Tasman
A trust that provides affordable housing for low income families says it is “easier” to build them in Nelson because of the help it gets from council, meaning Tasman looks likely to lose out. Nelson City Council gifted the land and waived the development contributions for the latest project, which saw eight homes built on St Lawrence St near Victory. While a $1 million grant from the Social Housing Fund accounted for nearly half of the costs, director Keith Preston believed the support from NCC makes it easier to build in Nelson, rather than Tasman, where the Tasman District Council do not waive development contributions. “It’s a real shame because there are some real housing need issues in places like Motueka and Golden Bay,” he says. “It’s so much easier to work in Nelson unfortunately.” While Keith labelled the development contributions as a “substantial amount,” Tasman Dis-
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Page 16-17
Phillip Rollo Reporter
editorial@waimeaweekly.co.nz
trict Council communications manager Chris Choat believes they only make up about four per cent of the cost of a house and says it was a council policy to treat all development proposals alike. He also says council would need to have the agreement of its ratepayers to support the project, as they were essentially requesting them to share the cost of providing the affordable housing. “If the council were to waive DCs, someone else, either the general ratepayer or other developers, would end up meeting any shortfall,” Chris says. “If the council was to introduce an exemption for ‘charitable’ organisations, it would have to go through a public process to secure agreement to in effect provide a subsidy to any SEE PAGE 2
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Rangers beaten
Sean and Julia Ducray from Wakefield enjoy a day skiing at Rainbow Ski Area on Friday morning. Photo: Aleisha Liebezeit/The Love Collective.
Stunning start to ski season The sun is shining and there is plenty of snow, which means conditions are perfect at Rainbow Ski Area. Following the school holidays, field manager Jono Hay praised July’s weather, saying the ski field has been open for a lot longer than this time last year with just three closed days. “It’s unusual for this time of the year. We’ve had plenty of clear days which is good. It’s cooler over night which
means the snow is holding up,” he says. “We’ve got beautiful spring snow conditions.” Numbers were tracking close to last year with “good numbers” throughout the school holidays. “We’re fully booked for schools over the next week too and the feedback from customers has been really good, they’re saying our snow is better than down south where it can be quite hard and icy.”
Most of the main trails were able to open throughout the holidays, which Jono credited a new snow making pump which was installed over summer. Rainbow Ski Area is generally open until October, although that is weather and snow dependant. But right now things were definitely looking positive. “August is supposed to bring more snow so we’re crossing our fingers and waiting.”
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