Posts by Hebe
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Whaledump.
-
Climate change.
Adaptation and mitigation. -
Flood.
-
Legal Beagle: Wellington Super City? Not…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
You're right. Whatever it's tiny rep for such a diverse and spread-out area.
The "board-of directors" CCC structure is flawed. My local councillors (in the city) are near invisible: I'm sure they do important works, but they are not easily accessible. Clinics at the library on Saturday mornings each week? Won't happen.
The Community Board, subterranean: the local media don't deem it worthy of reporting ever yet supposedly our neighbourhood decisions are made there.
The disconnect between the council and public deepens every month, and they wonder why. Face-time is the answer; not the token turn-up-for-the-fair but real opportunities for residents to interact with the council decision-makers. Marryatt was also against that in any shape or form.
-
Interesting piece thank you. The Christchurch-Banks Peninsula merger was much different to the Wellington plan. The Peninsula is a thinly populated, spread out area with difficult terrain and small settlements, and a low rate take compared with the needs of its settled areas. BPC was on the verge of selling off all its assets to fund a very few years’ maintenance and repair of essential services.
The choice for Christchurch city was unpalatable either way: that BPC staggered on and sold its assets (right down to parks) to keep going and went bankrupt within a decade regardless. That would inevitably have forced the merger with Christchurch, regardless of anyone’s wishes. Christchurch would have gained a bankrupt Banks Peninsula with years of neglected maintenance and no assets: a financial black hole for decades.
The other choice, which no-one wanted least of all CCC or the residents of both councils, was to merge while BPC was still a going entity and try to do the work.
The local representation and decision-making process post-merger has been a severe disappointment to me and many others. Tony Marryatt was actively against Community Boards (and any other form of democracy) having any real influence in the CCC processes, and the set-up was silo'd accordingly.
I believe the Dalziel council is changing that to some degree, but to me a tiny Community Board and one city councillor is not proper representation for the BPC.
-
Legal Beagle: Gerry Brownlee is…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Well yes, *most* people in Ilam had fairly minor quake damage.
Many hundreds of houses in Ilam/Fendalton are demolitions.
-
Hard News: The Boom Crash, in reply to Chris Waugh,
No, no, no, you want to encourage people to go south, otherwise Northland will fill up with economic refugees from Auckland and all that goodness you talk about will be gone. Then where are you going to go?
Oh no, you definitely don’t want to come south. No, no, no. It ’s partly why our houses are rocketing in value: youse Aucklanders come down here and say “575k far out” for a decent villa in a leafy street that would have gone for 425 two years ago.
BTW re volcanoes: beloved found out recently that Lyttelton Harbour is actually a ring of over 20 smaller volcanic cones – not the one caldera we had always been told it was. Makes sense when looking at the aerial shots.
@Sofie: EQC cover for land, imperfect though it is, is a national treasure and it comes all-in with house insurance. I believe NZ is the only country to insure land. I might be considered jumpy post 14,000 quakes (a good half 1 to 3km from my door) but do consider gritting your teeth and paying for decent cover. It’s so worthwhile.
-
Hard News: The Boom Crash, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
The people of Christchurch who’s Red Zone payouts were based on their CV might disagree. Actually reasonably important that the CV has some resemblance to reality, esp. when they are recent CV’s.
And @Sofie: Oh good God don't. I know people who purposely kept their CV low over decades and have been buggered by red zone payouts based on a tiny CV. The landlord friend who kept costs down by having indemnity insurance rather than replacement (now agreed value) insurance bitterly regrets the few hundred bucks a year saving that cost 250K.
While on insurance: do, please, be very wary of the agreed sum insurance. Building law changes, cost inflation, fees - for engineering, geotechnical, resource consents, architectural/design to name only a few - can be much more than you guess.
Wellingtonians in particular would be well advised to get an idea how much hillside geotech + ground testing for site-specific foundations would be. Then retaining walls: massive cost that seems to be not covered by insurers, so much so there is a specific group fighting that battle.
Whatever, do not accept the default sum proposed by your insurer.
-
Hard News: The Boom Crash, in reply to Russell Brown,
It may actually make sense for us to cash up and leave Auckland when the time comes.
We're thinking the same. Odd as it seems, Christchurch has definitely become the nation's Second City, and the capital of the South Island. The rebuild insurance money looks like it will keep driving the local economy for over another decade, when the downstream second-stage city should kick in. I now see the Chch property market as a smaller version of Auckland.
-
Insane. Christchurch is similar in its own smaller way: we’ve not had the great booms of Auckland until the last three years. Now whoosh. (We also broke the CCC website when the new values came out this year.)
The effects of this paper wealth are that my kids are seriously at risk of not being able to afford live in their hometown. When will the very simple tax changes be put in place that return housing to its place as a basic right rather than a way of making tax-free profit? A simple brake (which I benefited greatly from when I rented out a house for two years moons ago) is to make mortgage interest payments non-tax deductible.
The tax system is structured to make letting out a house or two attractive rather than housing as a human right.
Having said all that: we bought this shack in a quietly-quaked area five years ago; the latest valuation is 50% up on the purchase price; and going by recent sales close by it would fetch near double the purchase price. Damn silly.