Councillors met on Wednesday to approve the dump station, and to highlight the work of the infrastructure and services committee after the lockdown. PHOTO/ARTHUR HAWKES
ARTHUR HAWKES
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Masterton District Council has agreed to build a motorhome dump station at Henley Lake – the motion passed with full council support on Wednesday.
Councillors agreed that a free 24-hour dump station was essential to ensure Masterton kept its status as a Motorhome Friendly Town, as designated by the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association.
Councillors David Holmes and Tina Nixon were excluded from the voting due to their involvement with the Masterton A and P Association, based at Solway Showgrounds: one of the proposed sites for a dump station before Henley Lake took precedence.
Kevin Benge from NZMCA opened proceedings with a speech, which identified that Masterton would lose its status if it could not provide a convenient area soon.
Despite the fact that Solway Showgrounds would no longer be getting a council-funded dump station, Holmes and Nixon were in good spirits at the prospect of a Henley Lake site, and welcomed a $10,000 council grant for the Solway site – which would also be open to the public, but not at all hours.
Holmes referenced domestic tourism in his short speech about the importance of an accessible Masterton dump site.
“We must all remember that caravans are going to become such a major thing in the next few years, so it’s one way of our local tourism industry getting ahead.”
After the vote, the council then examined the reports from the infrastructure and services committee – a discussion chaired by David Hopman, manager assets and operations.
The activity report showed a colour-coded chart indicating each infrastructure project and its state of operation. Councillors were met with a sea of green, indicating many projects were up and running at normal operation after their halt under the covid-19 lockdown.
On-target projects included footpath and pavement renewals, LED street light upgrades, the Colombo Rd bridge renewal, the Henley Lake resource consent, the Castlepoint toilet upgrades, and the Douglas Villa clubroom repairs.
Hopman said the council’s teams were “flat out”, but that projects were generally “still on target”.
Ra Smith, Kahungunu iwi representative, also thanked Hopman for his leadership of the emergency operations centre, which provided covid-19 advice to people throughout the lockdown and was staffed by volunteers.
Audrey Dench, properties and facilities manager at MDC, said the team was “really proud to be supporting our community at this time”.
Crazy that towns feel that having MHFT status provides some sort of advantage to them. The reality is it puts one group on a pedestal while effectively ignoring others. In a lot of cases it is used as leverage by NZMCA to harass and bully towns into given them what they want. Look at Kaikoura, & Manawatu as recent examples.