The numbers are in and the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s (QLDC) agreement “in principle” to disband the Wanaka Community Board (WCB) has been slammed.

More than 300 submissions were received on the QLDC’s representation review and an overwhelming majority of those submissions were from residents of the Upper Clutha wanting to retain the WCB. 

QLDC senior governance advisor Jane Robertson presented “a snapshot” of the public submissions to the WCB at yesterday’s (Thursday August 12) meeting.

“There was a very large tranche of submissions received to retain the Wanaka Community Board,” she said.

Out of 301 submissions, 73 per cent were from the Upper Clutha; compared with just 16.3 per cent from Arrowtown; 6 per cent from Queenstown-Wakatipu; and 4.7 per cent from out-of-town.

WCB chair Barry Bruce said he was quietly confident there was good support for the board “and it was really heartening to have that confidence confirmed”.

“This is only one step in the [representation review] process... but I think council would be very wise to take on board the responses in the submissions.”

And given the level of community support, he believed “it would be very difficult for council to vote against retaining the board”. 

Wanaka-based councillor Quentin Smith, who in the past has said the board has “become ineffective” said he was not surprised by the community support for the board.

“In some ways [it’s] encouraging that there was some fight for the board,” he said.  

“If the board is retained, I hope that there is a good look at the effectiveness and structure of the board as [a] more effective board is a good outcome of the review.” 

Jane said some of the reasons given in support of retaining the WCB were that Wanaka is a distinct community; it’s not currently equally represented; and there seems to be a perception of Queenstown bias.

Other comments regularly made in the submissions included that the district should have more community boards; and that there should be only one district councillor appointed to the WCB instead of the current three.

The Representation Review advisory group tasked with reviewing the district’s electoral representation earlier this year recommended increasing the number of councillors in the district; establishing three wards where there had been two and, in a split decision, disestablishing the WCB, saying it “reflects a current inequity that exists as no other area or community within the district has a community board”.

The submissions will be available from next week on the council’s ‘Lets Talk’ website here and formal hearings in front of all the councillors will be held in Queenstown (August 26) and Wanaka (August 27).

The WCB made a formal submission to the review and, Barry, said, he would be speaking in support of that submission at the hearings.