Thread: Could be bad news

My good mates response was so good i had to share:
(He got it in before 5pm too)

Dear Wendy Thompson,

I have read the proposal in detail and understand that an unformed legal section of Opawe Rd is proposed to be stopped and ownership transferred to the adjacent landowner, and that a nearby pedestrian-only easement be established as a foot-traffic route.

I emphatically object to the proposal on the grounds that:

1. A ULR provides much stronger legal protection of public rights of access to public property. Swapping a ULR for an easement is a very poor deal for the public.

2. It’s claimed that "The unformed road is not used as a vehicular road by the general public, but it is used for pedestrian access to the Ruahine Forest Park by hunters and walkers.”, which one can only assume is because the ULR is made inaccessed to vehicles by the adjoining property owner’s fencing and farming operations. The ULR could be developed in future to provide vehicular access.

3. A reason given for stopping the road is that "The unformed road is also occupied by the owner immediately adjoining the unformed road.” I would like to know when occupation has ever been a good reason to take property from the public and ut it into private ownership of the occupier. This is not how this country’s democracy works. Our public institutions do not exist to steal public property.

4. It is not stated why the proposal is being made; what the problems are for the public at present, and how it would benefit the public.

Overall this proposal is clearly not in the interest of the public. That it would be proposed at all strikes me as a gross miscarriage of the protection of public property.

I would appreciate your response to the above points and would suggest that a potential solution is to simply move the ULR to make it more accessible to the public and perhaps further away from the adjacent landowner’s dwelling, if those are issues.

Sincerely,
Member of the Public