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A community-led plan for the spit at Sandspit will be a priority for the newly-elected Sandspit Residents and Ratepayers Association.
The group held its annual meeting last month, where chartered engineer Peter Deane was elected chair.
Deane says the maintenance of Sandspit’s charming network of tracks, through ongoing weed and pest control, will remain an important focus of the association’s work over the next 12 months.
However, the dissatisfaction with a concept plan for the development of the spit, put forward by Auckland Council last year and later abandoned after strident opposition from locals, has prompted the association to take the matter into its own hands.
“Council’s plan really focused on parking and rubbish, where as we would like to take an holistic approach to the peninsula’s use, including recreational, environment and commercial points of view,” Deane says.
“The plan put forward by Council was underwhelming, which prompted us to ask the question, ‘Well, why aren’t we directing this instead of Auckland-based planners?’”
The group’s third priority will be to look at ways to increase membership.
A year ago, it had 85 members and this has already risen to 170, but the estimated population of Sandspit is 763, or 425 households.
