Posted: 02 June 2005
Record number of submissions to Annual Plan
A total of 5158 submissions has been received for the Northland Regional Council’s annual plan. The overwhelming majority of submissions were about the regional events centre proposal.
Extra staff have been brought in to help with processing the final flurry of several thousand submissions which arrived to meet the 3pm deadline on May 31.
NRC Secretary David Jones says the process of indexing and analysing each submission is expected to take part of next week – less than half have been processed so far. As submissions have been processed they have been bound into volumes and sent out to councillors for their review. By the end of the process, there will be about 12 volumes of submissions.
“It’s all hands to the pump at the moment. Until we finish collating them all, we will be unable to give a final tally of how many for and against the events centre,’’ Mr Jones says.
Letters are being sent to about 200 submittors who have asked to speak to their submissions at hearings being convened in Awanui and Whangarei.
The hearings in front of councillors are being held on June 8 from 9.30am at the Awanui Sports Centre and June 9, 10 and 13 from 9am at the NRC council chambers in Water St, Whangarei. Each submittor has been allocated 10 minutes to make their submission.
Members of the public are welcome to observe the hearings.