Welcome
Apologies
Approval of previous minutes
Matters arising from previous minutes
Financial report
Correspondence
Council update
Review of Village Plan — focus group discussion (Kate)
Village Plan priorities for PCC budget 2017–18
NZTA meeting on pedestrian crossing at shops (Iain)
PCC Annual Plan oral submission (Iain)
Project updates:
Muri Rd community consultation (Pauline/Iain)
Heritage trails group update
Community garden update (Jonathan)
Guided tour of Kokohe Loop Track, part of the Ngā Uruora 20th Anniversary Celebration. Meet on Ames Street side of St Peters Hall, Paekākāriki at 9.30am. Medium level of fitness required. We will return by 11.30am.
Please RSVP to Ngā Uruora Kāpiti Project Inc. at kapitibush@gmail.com or call/text 027 914 6598
Potluck celebration dinner at St Peter’s Hall, Paekākāriki, from 6pm. Eating at 6.30pm, talks from 7.15pm. BYO alcohol and food to contribute. Light refreshments provided.
Please RSVP to Ngā Uruora Kāpiti Project Inc. at kapitibush@gmail.com or call/text 027 914 6598
Pukerua Bay’s village plan sets the direction for the Residents Association’s work with the community, Porirua City Council, and other groups we interact with. The Plan is a living document that needs to be reviewed every few years.
Workshop to review the Village Plan
We last revised the Plan in 2011, so it’s time to do it again. We’ll be surveying the whole community, but first we’d like to get the conversation started with a workshop in the School and Community Hall. It will be held on Sunday 30 April from 2.30–4.00 pm.
The workshop will be relaxed, and we hope it will be fun! Everyone is welcome, young and old. If you live here, we want you!
Got an idea of how we can make Pukerua Bay even better?
I updated our website’s theme, so it’s a bit nicer to look at, and works better with phones and tablets. The banner image is a photo I took of Pukerua Bay from the air one morning in October 2015, from the Wellington Aero Club Piper MBG (pilot: Chris Forbes). Enjoy!
We had a good day on Saturday. The weather behaved, and three new people turned up (Mike, Alan and Simon) and then there were the usual suspects!
Gay and John Hay weeded the entrance area and spread mulch around. We carried on further along the track. Mike removed the wattles growing behind Pamela’s fence while we released ti kouka (cabbage trees) and harakeke (flax) at Reveg area 1. We then walked further again along the track and removed wild fennel and ragwort from where the track starts to go up the hill, approximately Reveg area 4.
We have confirmed planting dates for Sunday May 28th, June 25th and July 30th beginning at 9.30am.
Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.Te Araroa track working bee: before and after.
Thanks to Gay, Vicky and Paul for organising the working bee.
It has been a while, perhaps too long; but although it may look like nothing has happened in the last year or two, your intrepid Residents’ Association has navigated a long and complex journey on your behalf, so that we can now, legally, finally, begin our planned community food forest!
Muri Reserve, with the community food forest site. Vehicle access from the end of Muri Road, along the station platform, across the ditch and to a gate in the fence, shown in yellow.
Porirua City Council are building vehicle access this month to the community food forest site on Muri Reserve. The access will go from the end of Muri Road, along the station platform, and across the ditch to a new gate in the fence, as shown in yellow on the map.
Getting the green light
To legally establish the community food forest, and to set it up to continue indefinitely as a community-stewarded project, required several things.
Firstly, we needed an organisation to take responsibility for stewarding the project, and maintaining its links to and engagement with the community. Initial discussions were around establishing a charitable trust, but the constitutional principles of the Residents’ Association to act and liaise on behalf of Pukerua Bay community projects was a natural fit.
Second, we needed a licence to garden on the Muri Reserve site from the Porirua City Council. Although this was more straightforward at the beginning, the process got a bit bogged down because of the Muri Reserve site boundary with the KiwiRail main trunk corridor. The licence was further complicated by the fact that the site is on reserve land, governed by The Reserves Act 1977, which requires more regulations and careful considerations of liability than would otherwise be the case. However, in June 2016, Te Komiti approved our application for the issuing of a licence for gardening, and this agreement has now been signed.
Thirdly, we needed to sign a scary-looking legal access agreement with KiwiRail for the vehicle access, which runs alongside the closed Muri Station platform. This arose from the gardening licence negotiations with council, and involved quite a lot of to-and-fro, and a good amount of persistence on our behalf from council staff. However this agreement is now signed and in place, and work to build the vehicle access will be commencing this month.
We also needed to lodge our shorter-term annual garden plan for the community food forest with the council parks department for approval, which is also happening this week. This is to ensure that we are adhering to local by-laws and so on, and not doing anything silly like planting convolvulus, or having a bonfire. (No, we can’t ever have bonfires on Muri Reserve land. Sorry.)
And finally, we needed to agree to pay public liability insurance. This is fairly standard nowadays unfortunately, due to changes in legislation around work safety, occupational health, ACC, local government liability and so on. The RA is now up for an annual insurance bill of a few hundred dollars a year to cover this, and would appreciate any fund-raising ideas or efforts from willing enthusiastic residents!
If you’re still reading this, well done; even more excruciating detail is available in the RA minutes, which you can browse here.
Te Araroa Track working bee this weekend: planting at the Pukerua Bay end. Saturday 25 March, 9.30 am, meet at the Muri Road track entrance. Click here for more event details:
