Friends of the Gibbston Character Zone (FOGCZ) was reformed in October to oppose Gibbston Valley Station’s (GVS) proposed 900-home subdivision, which also includes a proposed school.
The group fears it’ll destroy the rural nature of Queenstown’s renowned wine-producing region and risk the loss of its international ‘dark sky’ accreditation, granted early this year.
When a FOGCZ member tried to register to speak today, a senior council manager replied his topic wasn’t permitted under standing orders "because council is not the decision-maker when it comes to the fast-track proposals".
"This is a central government process and any concerns with the process or an application need to be taken in this direction," the manager’s response says.
FOGCZ’s Robert Yang replied saying four Gibbston residents had addressed the same topic in council’s October meeting.
The manager admits "it seems inconsistent", but at the time council wasn’t aware what was going to be addressed.
The council had since decided it was "not an admissible topic ... mainly because the council has no role in or influence on fast-track applications".
In response, Yang says council can provide input to the expert panel hearing fast-track applications, and so should give his group, which has about 120 members, a hearing.
He tells Mountain Scene council’s using "a bureaucratic process of making it difficult for FOGCZ to express their views and assist council to understand clearly what our concerns are".
"It is important to note fast-track rules do not prevent council from listening to its residents."
By comparison, he suggests council’s had a chance to hear the other side — GVS chief executive Greg Hunt told Scene in October he’d started talking to council before the fast-track process was announced.
FOGCZ chair and founder Samuel Belk claims "council advisers, meaning members of the council", urged his group to speak at today’s council meeting.
Meanwhile, Malaghans Valley Protection Society chairman James Hall, whose group opposes fast-track plans for 780 houses below Queenstown’s Coronet Peak, proposed by consortium Coronet Village Ltd, has also been refused speaking rights today.
"I think it’s absolutely shocking," he says, given council will have a right of say to the expert panel.
In an email to him yesterday, a council manager says in the Bill’s initial draft, council has no decision-making role in the fast-track approval process.
"Should the final Act (if passed into law) define a different role for council, any future requests to speak in public forum will be considered in that context."
‘We’re the wrong people to express your concerns to’
Council boss Mike Theelen says he can understand the frustrations of those objecting to fast-track proposals, "but their frustration is really not with council".
"While we’re a party under the legislation, we’re not a party to the decision-making."
Objectors should instead be speaking to the relevant Minister or ministry or the Environmental Protection Authority, he says.
"Given the council, to our understanding, will have such a limited role, then I don’t think [public forum] is the appropriate way for them to express their concerns, because we’re the wrong people to express their concerns to."
Theelen says his understanding is council’s role’s confined to providing technical information such as how the rules of its plan work, "and that’s not something ... public opinion can shape".
However, he suggests there’s nothing to stop objectors "talking directly to elected members".
