Waitaki district councillors may yet pause the draft Waitaki district plan, despite it already being with the public for consultation.
The draft plan was ratified by the council for release last December — more than a year after it was initially planned to be ready for public consultation.
A district plan outlines the rules around the use of land within a district. Plans are usually reviewed by councils every 10 years.
A period for submissions on the Waitaki District Council’s draft new district plan opened on March 1 this year and is due to close on May 9.
Waitaki district plan review committee chairman Cr Jim Thomson said at its April 10 meeting the committee reviewing the plan requested formal advice on a full or partial pause for the proposed district plan.
He described the request as "controversial", coming after the draft had already been delayed for a year and many hours had been spent discussing it and staff having been asked to make multiple changes in that time.
There had also been significant concern from landowners about parts of the draft plan.
On April 10 the committee spent three hours tweaking definitions and grammar in the document, with some expressing unease.
Cr Jim Hopkins singled out planning staff attitudes in the face of RMA reform.
"I don’t believe we can continue to insist that the world is the year 2022 or 2023," he said.
He sensed "a reluctance, I’d almost say intransigence" from staff on the matter.
There was an internal view that how the proposed plan was drafted was immutable and "if other people don’t like it they can submit", Cr Hopkins said.
"The approach seems to be our view stands, and everyone else can argue with that."
Over the past 18 months Waitaki rural landowners have repeatedly raised concerns with the council, particularly around the methodology used to formulate overlays by consultants for the draft sites and areas of significance to Maori, significant natural areas and outstanding natural landscapes.
Omarama farmer Simon Williamson and others have told the council they are concerned about a lack of "ground truthing" and the likely implications for traditional land use.
The Waitaki Property Guardians lobby group was formally launched last November as a result of landowners’ concerns.
Cr Thomson said the committee call for formal options included "parking it".
The idea would be to stall the plan for a while longer to see how the overarching legislative reform programme firmed up.
"It was more a case of what are the options, bearing in mind the statements coming out of central government," he said.
The committee has sought advice on the options of continuing with the proposed plan as it is; approving only "non-contentious" aspects of the plan; or parking the plan until the legislative programme implications were clearer.
Cr Thomson said a briefing by Ministry for the Environment officials to committee members had been relevant in changing their view, as had the continued community concern about the "contentious chapters" in the draft plan.
That would foreseeably affect submissions, Cr Thomson said.
Despite the formal statutory submissions process being under way the committee had agreed it wanted more advice.
"We just felt it was prudent."
Cr Thomson said the ultimate decision lay with the full council, but it was still based on the committee’s informed recommendations.
