21 February 2023
Media: Rotorua Daily Post
Topic: Reserves mowing
Enquiry
I've interviewed a woman called Tracey Mcleod who said she has been mowing overgrown areas of grass in Rotorua yesterday and today using her own equipment. Please find her comments below for right of response.
Comments:
She said she decided to “take matters into my own hands” and started mowing areas of overgrown grass.
“It’s just the total appearance of the city ... and we just feel that this is a tourist town and the shop window is the sides of the roads. And now that the gateway’s open to international tourists, we want the town presented like it used to be.”
Today, McLeod said she had just mowed the berm and a couple of rows in and around the sign of the Redwoods forest. She had also been mowing near Pererika St heading towards Old Taupō Rd.
“There’s a couple of really big long paddocks and some of the grass gets up to about shoulder height. So that involves quite a bit of work because you’ve got to do a high mow and then you’ve got to do heaps of weed eating.”
She said she had been complaining for “months” to the council but it had “fallen on deaf ears”.
“The sides of the roads out at Lake Tarawera got really high and they actually scratched the side of my vehicle and they were very unsafe because you had to drive in the middle of the road to avoid the grass coming onto the road and the marker pegs weren’t visible.”
She said the grass along Te Ngae Rd behind the Redwoods dog park would be “at least waist-height”.
“You couldn’t mow that with a lawnmower, you’d have to do it with a weedeater, do an initial cull first and then have a go at mowing it.
“That’s one of our main gateways into the city and it looks absolutely disgusting.”
She understood there was a “mass staff walkout” of contracting staff due to a change of management. “They’ve been understaffed for about six months.”
Questions:
-What is your response to these comments?
-How many contractors have left in the last six months who would normally be doing maintenance such as mowing?
-How many maintenance staff were employed in August 2022 vs now?
-Would the council say there is a shortage of maintenance staff and if so, what is it doing to address this?
Response
From DCE Community Wellbeing, Anaru Pewhairangi:
Our team is working incredibly hard to catch up on the mowing schedule and we appreciate the community’s patience with this.
The areas you have identified are not all Council managed areas. All State Highways are managed by Waka Kotahi – i.e. Te Ngae Road, and the Redwoods dog park is managed by Scion.
InfraCore (our mowing contractors), are in a similar position to many businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand, with staff shortages impacting businesses across the board. Additional staff have been employed by InfraCore part-time to assist with the mowing schedule over the busy summer period.
Last year, New Zealand experienced its warmest and wettest winter on record according to NIWA and we have had an incredibly wet summer as well. Understandably, this has created added pressure for mowing contractors across the district, with the combined wet weather and exceptional grass growth making grass maintenance difficult over the last six months.
Many other areas in New Zealand have been facing the same issue with grass growth – For example, Whakatāne (see here), Tauranga (see here), Thames / Coromandel (see here) and Taupō (see here).
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Media: Rotorua Daily Post
Topic: Request for judder bars in Fordlands
Enquiry
We understand there have been reports of people dangerously driving around on motorbikes in Fordlands and surrounding areas.
I've spoken briefly with the Fordlands Community Centre who said they had met with the council about installing judder bars, particularly as Bellingham Crescent and Meadowbank Cres only had half-judder bars which were not slowing people down.
I am seeking a response to the below questions:
How many reports on this issue has the council received? And in what time-frame?
How has the council responded to these issues?
What is being done to address these concerns?
Has the council looked into installing judder bars in the area? What was the outcome of this?
Response
From DCE infrastructure and environment Stavros Michael:
Rotorua Lakes Council is a Road Controlling Authority and as such it has the statutory responsibility to monitor and respond to emerging road safety issues.
We receive requests for traffic calming interventions such as speed humps on an almost weekly basis. We have a limited budget and resources for such work and we have to operate a priority list based on assessed risk.
All the requests we receive are assessed for risk based on a number of factors, including speed data, speed related crashes, pedestrian use and traffic volumes on that particular road.
The data is used to calculate a ‘priority score’ which enables the road to be ranked in terms of its known risk for installing traffic calming interventions which do not necessarily include speed judder bars. These assessments help us to form an on-going safety work programme.
In the case of Fordlands, traffic calming has already been installed on Meadowbank Crescent and Edmund Road, which were identified as locations of elevated risk.
With regard to Bellingham Crescent, to date Council has received three requests in the last two years. However, Bellingham is not yet prioritised for traffic calming.
Over the last few months, there has been feedback on dangerous use of motorbikes on the roads and shared paths in this area, which is an issue that needs to be reported to the Police. Speed bumps are not the only solution to speeding motorcycles