Bernie Wanden: Horowhenua mayor on the council re-examining berm mowing decision

Horowhenua District Council is re-examining its decision to stop mowing roadside berms.

It trimmed back the service in July in a decision that saved ratepayers nearly $250,00 annually - but prompted outcry.

Councillors have now voted to compile a report on options for reinstating it.

Horowhenua mayor Bernie Wanden says they want to look more closely at the impacts.

"It does not mean that we are going to flip-flop, all it means is that we want to understand what has happened since we stopped mowing berms."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather Duple see Allen eighteen past five. Now listen, it
looks like there might be a little bit of a
backdown coming on the living burms saga. You'll remember this.
The council stopped mowing the berms back in July because
they wanted to save some money. And then naturally there
was an outcry from residents, and then yesterday the council
voted to have another look at whether they make the
right call. Bernie London is the mayor of Hatera Fenwa

(00:21):
is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Now, Hey, Bernie, good afternoon, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
What's the problem? Is it a good idea in winter,
bad idea in spring once the grass starts growing.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Look, we're just wanting to understand what the impacts of
cutting cutting out the service it means. It does not
mean that we are going to flip flop. All it
means is that we want to understand what has happened
since we stopped mowing burns. As you can understand, there
are some people that are a bit put it out
by it all, but and so we just want to

(00:52):
understand what's going on.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Is the town starting to look a little rough?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Look in petches, Yes it is. There's been some good
raying lately and a bit of warmth. So the booms
are growing. Is this, but we're also seeing.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
But boodie, is this in parts of town where people
like are not mowing the booms? Is that what's up?
Some parts are nice, yeah, Lottle are making it efft
and other parts are not so nice.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, that's right. It is that case. And look, we've
got towns in villages, especially Fox and Shannon, where they
have very big booms, and that has causing some issues,
especially with some of those that aren't physically able or
don't have the capacity to be able to mow their booms.
So look, we just want to understand those issues and
try and I suppose work out a plan that we

(01:38):
may be able to accommodate that.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Is this also a case of people only really realizing
what's happening once it's happening, Like they didn't know beforehand
before you guys made this decision that this was on
the cards, but once it started to kind of get
a bit of traction in the media, they got upset.
Is that what happened exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
So this was part of our cost saving measures put
into our long term plan. Yeah, we had eighty eight
percent of the people that responded to our long term
plan tick the box where they said that they wanted
those savings to be made. Of course, now that we've
seen the impact of that, they're kicking up a fuss.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Now, Bernie, how do we get around this right? Because
what the speaks to is the lack of engagement in
local government just by your average ratepayers. So do you
guys need to make more of an effort to get
it out there what you're planning to do before you
do it?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, we try our best, Honestly, We've had more public
engagement and more meetings, Facebook live, post, the whole lot,
you know. I mean, we try our best to engage
with the community as best we can. Obviously, with a
long term plan there's a probably thirty issues that they
need to deal with and this one may have fallen

(02:49):
through the cracks and people not understood exactly what was
going on.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
All right, Bernie Hayt's good to talk to you, mate,
Thank you very much, appreciate it. It's Bernnie Wondon what if?
And it was mare? For more from Heather Duples Drive
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