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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