ACC STILL SEES PINK ELEPHANTS AT MATIATIA

The presentations by council officers to the Community Board at our May and June meetings of their plans for Matiatia still show that as usual they just do not get it. All they get is the typical brain-damaged desire of certain councillors to make $7 million back on the $12.5 million it cost. But if they had had the vision to buy it six years earlier they could have got it for $2.5 million and been $3 million ahead without having to lift a speculative finger. They would not 'have' to spend millions of our money on a white-elephant investment.

The officers still plan, some day, to make Matiatia a destination, and they still tell us that we want that. No. Get it dummies: it's a bus stop for floating buses. A place to come and go through, not to go to.

All they should be building is at least 600 efficiently arranged carparks near the wharf--and soon. Forget your plans for 70 apartments, and cafes, shops, eateries, etc., etc., etc. Forget your marketing puffery, your 'brown axis, your 'blue axis', your 'green axis.' Forget a marina.

Forget everything except what the island wants. Put enough carparks at the foot of the valley, where we want them, then all that unsafe roadside carparking can be done away with. And keep the bus stops at the terminal. Shifting them way up the road is just as stupid as expecting people to park out near Patagonia because you refuse to provide parking where we want it.

That would be sensible. But instead their grandiose plans reduce the present 450 carparks near the wharf to 376. Otherwise the obese white elephant will not fit.

And don't start any upgrade to Ocean View Road from the wharf to Mako Street (which is now seeking a resource consent) till the island has said yes. Otherwise the officers will do what they want--i.e., what the white elephant wants. They will have built a fait accompli with our money.

It is called democracy. Doing what the people want...