Diane Calvert: Wellington City Councillor among those that walked out during contentious roadworks meeting

Three Wellington City Councillors walked out of a meeting this afternoon - around contentious roadworks on Thorndon Quay.

The council agreed to reduce building raised pedestrian crossings from five, to two.

But Councillor Ben McNulty refused to vote, saying he was uncomfortable playing the role of a transport engineer.

He left the room as well as Nurreddin Abdurahman and Diane Calvert.

Calvert says they didn't have enough information to make a decision, and she doesn't support any raised crossings.

"We wanted to wait a couple of weeks until we could get that information - that was rejected."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Forgiven do for cl now.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Three Wellington City councilors have walked out of a council
vote on those controversial raised pedestrian crossings. They were supposed
to decide whether to reduce the number of raised crossings
on Thorndon Key from five to two, but some of
the councilors didn't like it, including Ben McNulty who walked out.
I just feel fundamentally uncomfortable about playing role of traffic engineer,
so I'm going to leave the room. And Diane Calvert

(00:23):
was another one of the three who walked out, is
with us. Now, hey Diane, Diane, huh hi, Heather, why
do you walk out?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Well, we've already pried to move an amendment saying, look,
we don't have enough information to make a decision. As
Band pointed out, we are not traffic engineers, and there
was seemed to be a bit of a beguty and
beerguty sorry from m ZTA. So we said, look, we
don't have enough information to make a decision, and we
wanted to, you know, sort of wait a couple of

(00:50):
weeks till we could get that information. That was rejected
and the chairperson had to have a casting vote because
we were fifty to fifty and so basically that was rejected.
That was voted down. So then we came to the
main vote, which is basically just going to go ahead.
And you know, at the end of the day, we
had these recommendations put in front of us and we

(01:13):
just didn't have the information. And on our councy, you've
either got to vote yes, no or walk out the room.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Diane, is that is the answer? Not obvious that you
have to vote down, Like the fewer of these raised
crossings you have, the better, because just the other day
you had emergency services unable to get to somebody having
a heart attack fast enough because they had too many
of these things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Absolutely, when we don't need them, we don't need them.
But the council's proposal was, well, since m ZTA aren't
funding them, we can at least do half of them.
And and it's wrong based.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
On are you like zero raiseds crossings?

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I said that none of them have been proven
to be you know, and if MZTA aren't funding any
of them, I mean that's got to tell you something.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, true, So what's the outcome? What happened today? What
was the vote then?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
So basically it was, it was, it was all. It
was all pretty much predetermined because once they voted down
our amendment, which is basically go back, give them information
for men's ata, talk to the local businesses about, you know,
about what they actually wanted and becoss seeing that road
every day. But no, that was rejected, but it was.

(02:23):
It was reloodly lost by the chair having to do
a casting vote. So the chair basically got two votes
and everyone else cut one, so we lost that one.
So it was basically going to go before you know.
The final vote was basically it was. It was a
done deal. And if we stayed in the room, yes,
the chair would have had to use their casting voted game.

(02:44):
But a good decision for something like this, it's not
fifty to fifty, as I said afterwards, we should get
consensus on something like it, or at least seventy five.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I just need you, I just need you to do
a little bit of a little bit of like inside
work for me. There's some controversy about it's windy and
Wellington today, is it.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
No, it's not. In fact, it's quite still. It's a
bit great, but no, it's very still.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Okay, Diane, thank you very much. You go there, there,
you go Still in Wellington, Diane Calvert, Wellington City councilor
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