There it was, in black and white, a strong opinion.
'' ... we don't need white or black trash renting cheap houses in Arrowtown. Arrowtown has a very low crime rate because poor people can't afford to live here and I want to keep it that way. Put them up on top of Queenstown Hill.''
An Arrowtown resident's hand-written comment regarding the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust's controversial 10-house development in Suffolk St might have been just one of 263 submissions on the issue, but it was both top of the pile (literally) and top of the media reaction.
The fact the submission was placed first in a three-part series of PDFs accessible via the QLDC website was ''accidental'', according to Jo Blick, of the Queenstown Lakes District Council's communications department, responsible for compiling and publishing the submissions.
''That submission came through the front desk at council, was stored in a separate place and was literally the last to arrive on my desk. It was scanned as a PDF.
''I didn't realise it was first [of the many submissions]. Unfortunately, it was just how it played out. Then again, it is all public information.''
