Queenstown Lakes Mayor Vanessa van Uden says the council has to do ‘‘a better job'' at giving residents information around parking changes in central Queenstown.
At a full council meeting in Queenstown last week, Ms van Uden said there was ‘‘mistrust and misinformation'' within the community around the Queenstown Town Centre Transport Strategy and the work programme and monitoring report presented to councillors.
She told councillors she ‘‘wasn't happy'' with how the work programme and monitoring report had ended up before the council and that it did not clearly identify what people could expect to see or ‘‘how it's all linked up'' with respect to parking changes.
The first ‘‘key initiative'' in the report, prepared by infrastructure principal planner Tony Pickard, was to remove on-street parking in the town and provide parking ‘‘at the edge''.
The report said design options were being prepared for Boundary St camper van parking, which would include the imposition of a one-way circuit for the bulk of the area, and dedicated camper van slots.
At present, there is space for 171 car parks.
Under the proposal, there would be 105 car spaces, with 33 camper van parks.
They would revert to ‘‘large car parks'' in the winter.
‘‘More substantive changes as envisaged by the strategy will be prepared for implementation, once public transport improvements are identified later this year.
‘‘The 2015 level of parking needs to be established so that compensatory provisions can be planned,'' the report said.
However, Ms van Uden said the report did not answer the questions the community had, including how the council planned to implement the plan, how it would be communicated and where alternative parking options would be.
‘‘It's a significant improvement ... but I think there's a lot more work to be done. It's got the bones of it ... but we need to put a bit more meat on it.
‘‘What I would like to do is get the two infrastructure portfolio leaders [with others] ... and actually come up with [a plan] that links it all together and expresses to the community what they can expect to see and when.''
