the view from mount victoria

Thursday night at the Forum

Last night the community gathered at a public forum organised by the Mt Victoria Residents Association to listen to invited speakers and discuss how to proceed with saving Crossways. We also took the opportunity to thank the Councillors, council officers and the St Andrews church for all their hard work to hammer out a compromise that will allow the community the time to fund-raise.

The meeting passed a resolution that a joint committee be formed between the Save Crossways group and the Residents Association, which will be tasked with gathering nominations for a Crossways community trust, and reporting back to the community within three weeks. We'll post the full text of the resolution as soon as we can, and some details on how you can nominate people to the Trust.

Don't forget - pubic forum tonight

There is a public forum tonight at Crossways, hosted by the Mt Victoria Residents Association, at 7:30pm. It's a chance to celebrate the fantastic achievement of saving Crossways, and to talk about what the future holds for our community house. See you there!

Fantastic news!

At today's Strategy & Policy Committee meeting, the Council voted to give Crossways a 12 month reprieve by providing some interim funding to St Andrews. This will allow enough time for the community to form a trust, put together a plan to re-invent Crossways for the 21st Century, and conduct some serious fund-raising. It's not the three years we asked for, but it's fair, reasonable, and - most of all - achievable. It's a fantastic outcome!

Our heart-felt thanks go to St Andrews for their flexibility and genuine commitment to finding a workable compromise, and to the Council who have allowed the community the time to re-invent our community house.

We'll post more information about what needs to happen next as soon as we can.

Meeting with St Andrews tomorrow

As well as talking to the Mayor, the Save Crossways group is holding a three-way meeting between the Council, the Presbyterian Church and community representatives, to see if there is some common ground and room for compromise.

We hope there is - after all, the community and the church have a long history together in Mt Victoria.

We understand that the Mt Victoria Presbyterian Church made a very generous gift of investments and property to St Andrews on the uniting of the congregations. We hope to continue that investment in people on Mt Victoria and the wider city as a legacy of the generosity of the former Mt Victoria church.

We see that the Presbyterian Church has disappeared from Hataitai and now plans to remove entirely from Mt Victoria, leaving the eastern side of the city without the social benefit of its presence. Surely there is still a call for the church to still be involved in our community?

We look to St Andrews as a champion of social justice, equity and opportunity for the 'little people', the outsiders and the socially disadvantaged. Therefore we see ourselves as having a parallel mission to the church in building an inclusive community.

We believe in fostering the kind of caring, hospitable, engaged and compassionate community, realizing the full potential of people that we think the church also hopes for. Surely we can be partners in this? Can't God also act through the collaboration of people acting in healthy community? A significant act of the generosity which St Andrews is known for, would resound across the city.

Our hope is that the church will soften its position on the immediate sale of Crossways, and that the spirit of common cause that has united the church and Mt Victoria for nearly 30 years can continue.

Council staff are opposed to Crossways

Part of the Draft Annual Plan process allows for council officers - that's the paid staff members of the Wellington City Council - to make recommendations to councillors about the submissions that have been received. And the council staff have decided that Mt Victoria doesn't need a community house, as the suburb is full of rich people and renters.

The full council staff report can be found here, and the relevant section is Appendix 5.

It's concerning that the report provides no concrete reason for declining funding for Crossways other than "you're rich and there are too many renters". In our view, the reliance on the peripheral issue of Mt Victoria's demographics as the prime argument for throwing Crossways to the dogs is an appalling piece of bias by council officers.

If the council has a policy of not providing community facilities to citizens on the basis of income, or education, or how long they've lived in their house, they should do so publicly, rather than skulking around the issue. Parents using the creche would be appalled to know that the council is intending to deprive them of childcare facilities solely because of the median income or average property values in their suburb. If these income-and-education-and-property-ownership criteria are the new "gold standard" for how projects are funded, then the council has a clear obligation to be honest about it.

The Save Crossways group has written to the Councillors to ask them to ignore the biased and irrelevant information in the council officers report, and to provide the interim funding so Crossways can be saved. This week is crucial to see if our pleas will be heard.

Ralph Pannett's Crossways prose poem

At the Wednesday night meeting, Ralph read a prose poem that summed up how he felt about the rich tapestry of community activity that has filled Crossways over the last three decades. With his permission, we decided to re-print it here:

The walls surrounding us at Crossways have a rich patina of the sounds, sights, smells and memories that are enshrined here. These I have loved, at Crossways: Children's voices, squeals of delight - and tears calling for comfort Appetizing odours from warm food - the clatter of cutlery on dishes Voices raised in sacred song and prayer - the foot-tapping for jazz musicians Happy chatter, neighbourhood parties - challenge and debate at political meetings

Of gathering and re-unitings
Distressed tones of intimate revealings - sympathetic listening
Light and shade on warm, homely woodwork - candlelit intimacies; the aroma of incense

Of solemn vows and undertakings in new partnerships
Young musicians venturing to sympathetic ears - polished performance of symphonic soloists
Of vibrant dance moves - the calm deliberation of yoga
Community notices exhorting and extolling - the colour splashes of children's art
Endless committee meetings debating policy - measured readings of poetry and literature
Fresh pine scent from Christmas Tree
Naming ceremonies and baptisms - funeral rites for the dear departed

These I have loved - at Crossways.

- Ralph Pannett

What a response!

When we set up the Save Crossways campaign, we had the sense that there would be wide community support for retaining our community house. But the proof would only come at the first public meeting - and we were overwhelmed by the response on Wednesday night.

More than 130 people packed Crossways to hear presentations from Kent Duston, Ralph Pannett and Iona Pannet on how the house can be saved, and its importance to the community. There were many questions from the floor, covering everything from the intended sales process to development issues and some very heart-felt stories of what Crossways means to individuals. And local ward councillor, Ian Mckinnon, spoke very eloquently on the council processes that will need to be navigated in order to save the building. Ably chaired by Mike Smith, the meeting went for nearly two hours before everyone dispersed into a chilly Wellington night.

Since the meeting, we've been overwhelmed by offers of support and assistance. Many people added their contact details to our e-mail and phone lists, and people seemed to take to heart the need to contact the councillors to make their feelings known on this important community issue.

So thank you to everyone who attended the meeting!

I'm worried.

This is a guest post from Kent Duston, spokesperson for the Save Crossways Campaign. Kent presented the submission for the group to the Wellington City Council earlier today.

When I wrote the submission for the group - asking the council to underwrite the costs of keeping Crossways in community hands - I was optimistic the council would see the huge community support, and would seriously consider our proposal. After all, the money we're asking for is peanuts - a mere $120,000 out of an annual council budget of $400 million. And given the council extracts around $6 million from Mt Victoria residents in rates and fees, asking for 0.2% of it back seemed pretty reasonable.

Judging from the response of Alick Shaw to our verbal submission this afternoon - he's Chairperson of the Annual Plan committee and Deputy Mayor - I'm a whole lot less optimistic today.

Having cut off the formal presentation from the group, Cr Shaw then heard a verbal submission from Graeme Howell. If you don't already know him, Graeme is a long-time Mt Victoria resident and an absolute stalwart of both Crossways and the Presbyterian Church. And bless his little cotton socks, Graeme did a fantastic job of explaining the value of Crossways to the community in general and himself in particular.

Which is when Alick Shaw asked the most astounding question - "What makes you think that retaining Crossways is worth $10 per person per visit?" Graeme answered very well, but I think he was as surprised as I was by both the tenor and intent of the question. Retaining Crossways is easily worth $10 per person per visit, and to imply otherwise seems very odd. If there's apparently no value in people having a community centre, does this mean the council is about to dispose of all the other community facilities across the city? And if this is official council policy, shouldn't we be told? Or is there a hidden agenda from the council?

Cr Shaw's comments didn't seem to bode well for community facilities in Wellington. So please come to the meeting tomorrow (Wednesday 30 May, 7pm at Crossways) with all your ideas on how we can retain Crossways as our community house.

We'll keep the blog up-to-date with progress throughout the day tomorrow.

"their ghosts would be outraged ..."

Marilyn Duckworth needs no introduction - one of the giants of modern New Zealand literature, who memorably describes herself as a 'New Zealander in her wooden tent above a faultline, practising the trick of permanence':

I first remember Crossways from the days when the Poetry Society - started by my mother, Irene Adcock, in the seventies - held meetings and readings there. Several of the poets whose names now decorate the waterfront on Writers Plaques - Lauris Edmond, Louis Johnson, Denis Glover – spent memorable evenings in the house. Their ghosts would be outraged to see the place and its accompanying history extracted like a redundant tooth. It is not redundant - it has served in diverse ways as the practical home of Mt Victoria’s community spirit. I am reminded of that sense of community we share every time I walk past the friendly corner oasis which is Crossways. Family parties and decade celebrations figure among my personal memories and the thought of Crossways’ demolition offends me as it does my neighbours and friends.

Chalking the walk

If you've been wandering the streets of Mt Victoria in the last week, you will have seen the notices chalked on the sidewalks to come to the public meeting on Wednesday at 7pm. So this is a reminder to mark the date and time in your calendars - we'll see you at Crossways!