During last week’s public forum before councillors made a decision on a possible lease of council land to Select Contracts for a zipline at Oamaru Harbour, Mr Kircher addressed community concerns the project, or other development, could go ahead without a plan for the harbour area.
"It’s not that we don’t have a plan," he said. Rather, the proposal was to update the 2011 plan for the area, "and that is happening".
Nevertheless, council assets group manager Neil Jorgensen had listed as an option for councillor consideration to request the company wait 12 months for the completion of the harbour strategy and the rules for the harbour area to be defined in the district plan review and some - notably the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust - have argued a harbour plan should first be in place.
Mr Kircher has excused himself from decision-making on the zipline due to his past affiliation with the proposal, but councillors deferred a decision on a lease until after public consultation.
After the meeting, Mr Kircher said the plan would go through "various stages" at the councillor level, then be reviewed by stakeholders, at which time a draft would be taken to the public for feedback.
"It’s certainly valid that the plan has not been updated as recently as it could have been done, so we are looking to address that now, but there have been a succession of plans in the past. We started off with a fairly blank slate, so the plans were fairly broad and high level," he said.
"It’s trying to be as inclusive as possible ... We’re wanting to do it right, but we’re wanting to do it sooner rather than later."
"The problem is, you can never quite predict what might come through the door tomorrow, the community’s door, people wanting to do things."
