A Hataitai family dodged a $400 fine for mistakenly putting glass into their general recycling wheelie bin, but instead had a collector slap an official sticker on the lid with the message “No bottles dick”.

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The Biswell household – which includes four international students who are staying with the family – admit there was glass in the bin but think the sticker message they received was over the top.

I wonder which they would prefer – a pretty tame, but offensive message, or a $400 fine? I know which I’d go for…

Hamilton City councillors won’t want to be caught napping from the end of the month when three web cameras in their chamber go live.

From September 29, anyone who wants to will be able to see daytime TV of a council meeting on their computer.

But no rules on what can be shown have been agreed, so the camera operator will decide what goes live.

The webcams are being set up in the council chambers this week and councillors have been assured they’ll be briefed before screening starts.

The coverage will be available live and on-demand at the council’s website.

Very cool. I’ll post some links when the service actually goes live.

Vandals have tried to set fire to an artificial rugby field set up in Civic Square for kids to play the game during the Rugby World Cup.

One of the plastic goalposts was snapped by an unknown number of vandals last night, who also tried unsuccessfully to set fire to the artificial playing surface, which is fire resistant.

Wellington City Council’s sports portfolio leader John Morrison was this morning furious with the damage.

”There are truckloads of kids coming down here over the next six weeks. It isn’t totally brutalised at the moment but it is pretty sad to see that thugs have been trying to do this,” Morrison said.

I walked past the turf in the early afternoon a few days ago, and there were three people playing a rather skillful game of soccer on it – only in Wellington!

Such a shame to see someone take to this rather novel, temporary attraction.

Greg Bondar has written an excellent critique on The Wellingtonista, discussing the new “shared space” on Lower Cuba Street.

The idea of developing Lower Cuba Street as a shared space was a reaction to public disapproval of changing the status of Manners Mall from a pedestrian mall to a bus route. A report to WCC Strategy and Policy Committee (PDF) highlighted that residents were upset at the loss of pedestrian space.

Unfortunately, the final design looks strikingly different. Councillors voted to include 20 car parks in the design, giving us this: While it boasts wide footpaths and trees, I challenge anyone to point to the shared part of the shared space. Car parks are 2h pay-and-display parks, which doesn’t lend itself to sharing – except with other cars

So Greg is proposing to take some action to high light this issue. It’s called Park(ing) Day and it’s on Friday the 16th of September. The idea is to pay for car parks, and turn them into people parks.

It looks like the idea is still taking shape. We’ll keep you informed of progress, but I highly recommend you contact Greg on the Wellingtonista if you’re keen to be involved.

Of course, the one notable absence is the Wellington City Library system…

The biggest difficulty was merging the libraries’ online catalogues.

Wellington City Library was interested in joining SMART, but their cataloguing system was too different to the other six, Mr Anderson says.

One of the key bonuses to local government amalgamation would be the provision of shared services. However I think this goes to show (along with serveral other good examples in the Wellington region) that we don’t need amalgamation in order to provide better services to the ratepayers of the entire Wellington region.

Mr Serepisos has made it clear the Phoenix is not for sale, even though he has proposed in the High Court an “orderly” sale of assets he says are worth $232m to repay debts of $203m.

But council sports portfolio leader John Morrison says Mr Serepisos should start any asset sale with the Phoenix. “This is the ultimate test for Terry. Does he really care about the Phoenix or is he going to destroy it?

“If he stuck up his hand and said: `I love the Phoenix but I’m not in a position to continue to fund it’, with the recession, downturn in the property market, and his well-documented financial troubles, then everyone would accept that.

“He could work with whoever and would end up as being founding president of the club. Everyone would recognise his valuable contribution and applaud him at Phoenix matches.”

Of course, the elephant in the room that Morrison doesn’t address is just who would buy the team? Is this something that ratepayers money should go towards?

Normally I wouldn’t support term limits.  While presented as a technique to ensure greater accountability of elected officials to the public, in practice they actually strip voters of the right to chose the best qualified candidate.

In general it should be the voters who decide whether or not an elected official has served for too long, not the operation of an arbitrary term limit that treats the excellent, the mediocre and the terrible exactly the same.

However, the recent conduct of Stephanie Cook makes me wonder whether it is time for New Zealand to consider term limits for local government.  Phil Quin makes an eloquent case for seeing Ms Cook as a councillor who has been complete captured by officials.  An elected representative who sees her first loyalty to the officials she is meant to be exercising governance over, on our behalf, rather than to us the ratepayers of the city.

Stephanie Cook is proud to have been on council for 16 years.  Despite this long service she is rated as one of the worst performing councillors in Wellington.

At the last council election, Stephanie Cook received 1077 first preference votes: the fourth highest number of first preferences.  There were 28,268 eligible electors in the Lambton Ward of the Wellington City Council.  This means Stephanie Cook was chosen by less than 4% of Lambton residents as their first choice representative.  Less than 4%, after 16 years of service.  On the basis of this “mandate” she receives a ratepayer funded salary of at least $89,925 (the sum she received last financial year).

Such low turnout suggests a major democratic deficit on the Wellington City Council.  The existing councillors are re-elected election after election on the basis of incumbency and name recognition.  This has to change.  A limit in consecutive terms is a blunt instrument, but this week’s events suggest it is necessary.

It’s largely based on the Residents’ Satisfaction Survey of 600 Wellingtonians. By all accounts, it sounds rather positive, but it’s ultimately an exercise in self congratulation.

I can’t seem to find a copy of the actual results of the survey, it would be interesting to dig through them. If anyone has a copy, could they please send them through?

Also, regarding yesterday’s controversy, John Pagani has blogged on Councillor Cook’s response…

It is hard to imagine a worse muck up. There has to be accountability. The right way to handle this is to immediately accept  responsibility for a Council failure.

During the local body elections, Councillor Cook was rated by an expert panel as one of the Council’s worst performers.

Though accessible, she is ineffective, has a poor work ethic, is reactive and not especially responsive.

Instead of looking after elderly folk in council flats, her council is leaving them dead, while she says her priority is to get a community vegetable garden going.

The two competing designs are from Andrew Sexton Architecture and Bevan + Slessor. Take a look below, links go through to more details about the designs…

Bevan + Slessor

Andrew Sexton Architecture