Chink in the wall?

Has South Wairarapa District Council begun hearing the community’s voice on Pain Farm Estate?

More than five years after the Martinborough Community Board asked for the estate’s financial records, SWDC has formally told the MCB:

1. Staff are scrutinising “historic financial records for the Estate and (will) thus provide an accurate account of overheads and charges paid to the council” from Pain Farm.

The council added that “overcharges, underpayments and any non-payment for council-held (farm) leases will be … refunded where appropriate.”

2. Council is seeking advice “from Trust Specialists” over “an appropriate future management model for the Estate … from the perspective of what is best for the Pain Farm Estate Trust.”

The statement from council followed a meeting of MCB members with the deputy mayor and council CEO.

The new talks came after the mid-May public meeting voted almost unanimously “that Pain Farm Estate should be held as a separate, independent trust, and we ask the council to step aside.”

MCB members told The Star they “strongly feel that this (council action) will be a positive step to assuring our community that their voices have been heard.”

Board chair Storm Robertson said the “progress” was that council CEO Janice Smith is looking at the issue “from the Trust point of view. And she has a trust lawyer doing it … but the track record suggests we may not get what we want out of that either.”

MCB member Angela Brown noted the council “was going back well over two years into the (financial) records, and we’ve never (previously) had a commitment to go back that far.”

MCB member Mel Maynard said the council’s public consultation on waste water nearly a decade ago was all about “whether the community wanted to put waste water to land _ and there was nothing about Pain Farm. 

“No matter how much you consult, if you’re not talking the full story and the people you’re talking to are beneficiaries of that land _ there’s something you’re not telling them.”