Posted
16th July 2001
Community Gardens In Balance
by
James Redwood
Supporters of Auckland city's community icon, St Benedict's
Community Garden, will be pleased to know that a reprieve from
our July 20 eviction date is probable, but needs helpful efforts
to come close to being sure. We have been building a case to
postpone the gardens eviction since the decision by Hobson Community
Board last year. Our argument at the time was that Hobson CB
was not the proper authority to be making decisions about Basque
Park, and we also correctly argued that the majority of the
community wanted the gardens to stay in some form. Both arguments
failed and HCB voted 5:3 to evict us with a year's notice.
Here's the news:
The
Council's own lawyers have proven us right! It has recently
been discovered that we were right all along, it is illegal
for Community Boards to be administering leases of Park and
Reserve land. However this only gets us a step closer to gaining
our postponement.
As the Hobson board were unaware of the legal facts at the time,
their eviction decision stands in law. However they will respond
to our request to postpone, by passing the decision back to
the correct authority - the Parks and Recreation Committee.
So at the July 17 (next Tuesday) meeting of Hobson Community
Board, they will recommend to Parks and Rec that they postpone
the eviction date, which is an undreamed-for about turn from
our perspective. We will still be speaking to the matter in
public forum. We now have to convince the members of the Parks
and Rec committee at their July meeting to uphold that HCB recommendation
and, indeed, postpone the eviction.
We are asking for a postponement because we knew that the Hobson
Board would never overturn their decision, but they might postpone
its enaction until after the upcoming election if they were
made aware of the level of publicity the eviction of the gardens
would generate should it go ahead. We also wanted a postponement
because there will soon be council policy adopted on community
gardens (probably around December) and we wanted our case reviewed
in the light of that policy as we would be more likely to get
the decision overturned with clear council policy support .
(we know the nature of the research findings are favourable)
How
can you help?
Well
you just have by absorbing all that information, however, to
take an active part in supporting us you could write, fax or
call a member of the Parks and Rec committee..
..
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