Minutes of a Meeting of the Whanganui District Council
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Minutes of a Meeting of the Whanganui District Council Property and Community Services Committee held at 1.00pm on Tuesday, 20 June 2017 in the Council Chambers, 101 Guyton Street, Whanganui. Present: Cr Helen Craig (Chair), Mayor Hamish McDouall, Crs Jenny Duncan, Josh Chandulal-Mackay, Charlie Anderson, Philippa Baker-Hogan, Hadleigh Reid, Alan Taylor, Rob Vinsen and Graeme Young, and Ms Sandra Falkner (Wanganui Rural Community Board). Apologies: Cr Jenny Duncan (lateness), Cr David Bennett, Cr Murray Cleveland, Cr Kate Joblin. In attendance: Kym Fell (Chief Executive), Bryan Nicholson (Chief Operating Officer), Tasha Parker (Manager, Whanganui Venues and Events), Stuart Hylton (Waste Management and Minimisation Advisor), Joe Salmon (Online Communications Officer). Secretary: Therese Zimmerman (Governance Services Officer). Guests: Jodie Brunger (Community Sport Manager, Sport Whanganui) and Danny Jonas (Chief Executive, Sport Whanganui). 1. Apologies Committee’s Resolution Proposed by Cr Craig, seconded by Cr Taylor: 1.1 THAT the apologies of Councillors Jenny Duncan (lateness), David Bennett, Murray Cleveland and Kate Joblin are accepted. CARRIED 2. Declarations of Interest Mayor McDouall declared conflicts of interest in relation to Item 6: Property Group Activity Report – any discussion related to the Riverfront Public Toilet and Item 8: Waste Minimisation Working Party Report – any discussion related to Plastic Bag Free Whanganui. 3. Minutes of Previous Meeting The minutes of the Property and Community Services Committee meeting held on 28 March 2017 were tabled at Whanganui District Council’s meeting on 2 May 2017. The minutes were received, and the reports and recommendations were adopted by the Council. References – Agenda Attachments Minutes 28 March 2017 (provided separately) Committee’s Resolution Proposed by Cr Craig, seconded by Cr Chandulal-Mackay: 3.1 THAT the minutes of the Property and Community Services Committee Meeting held on 28 March 2017 are confirmed. CARRIED 4. Actions Arising from Previous Minutes No Item Resolution Action % Completed 1 Property and THAT it is recommended to Council Stuart Hylton 50 Community Services that all events receiving Council Discussions started with Committee meeting funding or requiring a licence to Customer Services to include 14 February 2017 use a public place, be required to this provision in Licence to 6. Waste submit and operate an approved Occupy applications. Waste Management and waste minimisation plan for the Plan application form devised. Minimisation Working event. Party Report. 2 7. Animal Welfare THAT a further report is awaited on Rosemary Fletcher 50 Centre Update. the suitability of Airport Road. Update report to be completed September 2017. 3 8. Report on Dog THAT the Dog Control Policy and Jo Meiklejohn 100 Control Policy and Practices report 2015/16 is Complete. Practices under adopted and sent to the Secretary Section 10A Dog of Local Government. Control Act 1996, for 2015/16 year. 4 Late Item: Future of THAT the District Library Business Pete Gray 100 District Library Board is disestablished and the Library Business Board Business Board Library Business Unit activity disestablished. Library brought in-house. operation will be fully in- house from 1 July 2017. Officer assessment of significance of decision – In terms of the Significance and Engagement Policy 2014, the decision is not significant. Committee’s Resolution Proposed by Cr Craig, seconded by Cr Vinsen: 4.1 THAT the information is noted. CARRIED Mayor McDouall and Cr Baker-Hogan joined the meeting at 1.05pm. Property and Community Services Committee 20 June 2017 5. Operations Group Activity Report Bryan Nicholson, Chief Operating Officer, reports: Executive Summary The purpose of this report is to provide the Committee with an update on the District Library, Whanganui Regional Museum, Sarjeant Gallery, NZ Glassworks, Whanganui Venues & Events, Arts Facilitation, Emergency Management, Safer Whanganui and Health & Safety, which form the Operations Group, for the period 1 January 2017 to 30 April 2017. Progress Update District Library This was a (relatively) quiet quarter for the Library, with staff bedding into their new roles following a major restructure in December 2016. Frontline Services Manager, Nicholas Keene arrived from Auckland with his family in February. Nick was previously Community Library Manager at Ranui Library. Preparatory work for the introduction of Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tagging and the move to a new Integrated Library Management System (ILMS) has been underway through the period to the end of May. RFID will enable customer self-checkout and return and speedier transactions by staff; and the new ILMS will deliver improved functionality at a significantly reduced cost. A full report will follow once the systems are in place. The new system will go live on 22 June 2017, with RFID going live in September. A Children’s Day event was held in Queens Park on Sunday 5 March 2017. The Library stepped in after SKIP lost funding to help community partners, including Nga Tai O Te Awa, organise the family fun day. The event was attended by more than 1,000 people. The move of the heritage collection into the climate-controlled storage is complete. The mobile shelving (enabling more items to be stored in a smaller area) and the climate control system were entirely funded by a grant from the Lottery Grants Board Environment & Heritage Committee. Heritage Librarian Lynley Fowler celebrated fifty years’ service with Whanganui District Library on 6 February 2017. The District Library activity dashboard for January to April 2017 is attached. (Ref A1) Whanganui Regional Museum The main Museum buildings closed to the public from September 2016, but the Museum continues to provide a high level of access and has made major advances in its collection management and conservation while working on the overhaul of its storage, work and exhibition facilities. The seismic project is on schedule and being carried out with a high degree of co- operation among staff of the Council, the Museum and the contractors, W&W Construction. At the same time, the Museum secured funding for additional work from the Lottery Grants Board, the Minister for the Arts, Culture and Heritage, Te Puni Kōkiri Property and Community Services Committee 20 June 2017 and bequests totalling more than $900,000. Work on the Museum’s upgrade project is already underway and will continue into 2018. The Museum has yet to set a reopening date, but it is expected to be in the third quarter of 2018. The Museum’s temporary site at 62 Ridgway Street has kept the Museum active and accessible to the community while enabling the continuation of a range of key activities, most importantly, the Ministry of Education’s Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom programme. Overall, over 32,000 people used the Museum across a variety of sites in the first nine months of the year, exceeding the annual visitation target. All other Performance Indicators have been met or are on track for fulfilment by 30 June 2017. The Whanganui Regional Museum activity dashboard for January to April 2017 (Ref A2) and Service Level Agreement 2016 – 2017 (Ref A3) are attached. Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui The period 1 January 2017 to 30 April 2017 saw visitorship of 19,883. This comprised: International visitors: 1180 National visitors: 4179 Local visitors: 4619 i-Site Gallery visitors: 4884 Website: 5021 Brief highlights for this period include: The Gallery produced eight exhibitions: Frances Stachl: Fiction in the space between Jeweller Frances Stachl made jewellery in response to personal objects that were borrowed, lost and pirated and offered by over fifty participants; Richard Wotton: Marking Time – Portraits of the inked featuring 45 black & white photographic portraits of tattooed people many from Whanganui; Vignettes: 30 Years at Tylee Cottage 1986-2016 an exhibition to mark the 30th anniversary of the Sarjeant’s artist-in-residence programme at Tylee Cottage which has seen over fifty artists participate; Opera costumes coinciding with Wanganui Opera Week 2017 the Gallery displayed four costumes from NZ Opera’s 2016 musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; Motorcycle display coinciding with the 2017 Cemetery Circuit the gallery displayed four motorcycles from the collections of Whanganui motorcycle enthusiasts; Susan Frykberg: It shows really, a rather beautiful spirit Susan Frykberg was artist-in-residence at Tylee Cottage over Summer 2016-17, for her exhibition she has responded to the life and works of artist Edith Collier in the context of a sound and film installation; 2017 Belton Smith & Associates Ltd Whanganui Arts Review annual selected exhibition featuring the work of artists living in the region; Function & Fancy – decorative arts from the Sarjeant Gallery collection and beyond includes household and decorative items from two local historic homesteads alongside the Gallery’s collection of decorative arts. In addition to the exhibitions the Gallery hosted 37 tours, public, private and outreach events, at 38 Taupo Quay, the iSite Gallery and beyond. Property and Community Services Committee 20 June 2017 The Curator of Collections has successfully dealt with 17 collection related queries during this period; and the number of items in the collection catalogued to best practice international standard now stands at 2,157 Flight into Egypt was removed from the Sarjeant for the first time since 1922 and taken to Auckland Art Gallery for conservation treatment. Once the treatment is complete, it will be stored with Auckland Museum until it is ready to return to the redeveloped Sarjeant Gallery Collection items have been loaned to: Christchurch Art Gallery; Te Papa; Wallace Arts Trust (Auckland); Dunedin Public Art Gallery; Hastings City Art Gallery; NZ Portrait Gallery (Wellington) On 15 March staff completed an application to the 2017 round of the Significant Projects Fund – an outcome is awaited; and fundraising towards the Sarjeant Gallery Redevelopment now stands at approximately $26.1m The Sarjeant Gallery activity dashboard for January to April 2017 is attached.