Plan for new kindergarten as wait list bulges
Tasman District Council will consult the community on a plan to open a kindergarten on reserve land in Wakefield.
Nelson Marlborough Kindergarten Association has asked the council to grant it a lease for the kindgarten in the village’s former scout hall, on Treeton Place local purpose reserve.
The association advised the move was “a way to alleviate unmet community need” with a wait list topping 100 at the kindergarten in neighbouring Brightwater.
The association sought a lease for 25 years to operate the kindergarten in the building owned and formerly operated by Scouts NZ at 24 Treeton Place, a report to the council’s environment and regulatory committee said.
The committee last week agreed to the report’s recommendation to publicly notify the council’s intention to grant the ground lease.
The membership of the scouts had dropped to the point where there were no regular troop meetings there, and the building was in a “deteriorating state”, the report said.
Having a new owner with resources to improve the building was considered a likely benefit for the community, it said.
Nelson Marlborough Kindergarten Association chief executive Craig Vercoe advised that negotiations to buy the building from Scouts NZ were all but finalised, the report said.
The association sought a lease with an initial term of five years, with two rights of renewal for 10 years – subject to it establishing a viable kindergarten facility on the site in the initial five-year term.
The association needed certainty it would be able to operate for long enough to justify investing about $1 million to repurpose the building, report author, programme leader land and leases, Robert Cant said.
There was no requirement in the Reserves Act to publicly notify the intention to grant the lease, Cant told the committee.
The committee could simply grant the lease if it felt the proposal was sufficiently well understood in the community, he said.
However. Cant recommended a public notification process, given the length of the lease term involved, and the change from occasional use by scouts, to a multiple-day-per-week use as a kindergarten.
Councillor Mike Kininmonth said the council ”seemed hamstrung by bureaucracy“in going to the public about granting a ground lease for a kindergarten.
“We’ve already got a building that’s been leased ... and we’re looking at going out to the community to say ‘is this alright’?”.
Vercoe had expressed similar views, Cant said.
Publicly notifying the plan would delay the association’s ability to alleviate the unmet childcare needs of Wakefield and surrounds, he said.
But the council ran a bigger risk by not consulting the community, Cant said.
“We run the theoretical risk of judicial review.”
Council staff thought there were “implied obligations” under the Local Government Act to publicly notify the intention to grant the lease, he said.
Councillor Christeen Mackenzie for Moutere/Waimea Ward supported consultation, saying she was not sure the plan was widely known about in the community.
However, she urged the process to be done “as quickly and efficiently as possible”.
Committee chairperson, councillor Chris Hill said consulting “seemed like a good idea and straightforward”.
The council would invite submissions in the next few weeks, with iwi consultation due to commence under a similar timeframe.
Submissions would be referred back to the committee to consider before making a final decision to grant, or refuse, a lease.