17/04/2025
Incredibly sad to see the effort and opinions of over 2000 people (88% of all submission) get cast aside for a decision at Monte Cecilia Park that destroys a wonderful dog off leash facility for a community of dogs and their owners 😭🐶 What a gruelling meeting it was, several hours on this dog access item alone. Jon Turner - Puketāpapa Local Board and I fought hard to point out the merits of keeping the off leash area and the expert staff advice that also pointed in this direction to no avail. He pāpōuri te wā! So disappointing.
Also ngā mihi to Julie Fairey for sitting through our entire business meeting (7.5 hours!) watching it all unfold.
Absolutely gutted today as our Local Board decided to punish responsible dog owners who use Monte Cecilia Park's off-leash area by removing the off-leash area and making the whole park on-leash.
This decision has seen the biggest amount of public feedback I've seen in the nearly 6 years I've been on the local board. Over 900 submissions directly on the proposal, as well as a 1000-signature petition.
Submissions were 88% against this change, with the other 12% largely raising concerns about off-leash dogs in the rest of the park - there was very little feedback about the actual off-leash area causing issues.
We heard directly from the community at our hearing, who spoke about the sense of community in the off-leash area, with teachers, police, academics, young mothers, and recent immigrants all speaking of the joy they feel when they gather in this area and have their dogs play with each other.
In my speech, I spoke about how this decision penalises good dog owners who follow the rules for the actions of others in the park. I don't believe removing this off-leash area will result in the rest of the park (which is on-leash) becoming less likely to have off-leash dog issues - of which there had been around 1 issue reported a month.
Bobby and I had advocated for better signage - as staff advised, we could have implemented unobtrusive bollards marking out the off-leash area, and more compliance. The animal management team hadn't been prioritising this park as somewhere to visit due to the lack of complaints, but following this process had been visiting more often.
The board ended up passing a resolution asking our Parks team to investigate providing another off-leash area in the park, but the time frame on this is uncertain.
My thanks go out to those who took the time out of their lives to write feedback, to come and speak to us, to email their experience. People spoke of the park as a safe space for women due to the wide sight lines, of easy access for those with limited mobility, and a great place to spend time with family. Our chair, when moving the resolution to remove the off-leash area, said "Families don't go there, senior citizens don't go there, people don't have picnics". That doesn't match up with my experience at the park at all. I empathise with people who have had negative experiences with dogs off-leash in the on-leash area of the park, and had hoped that our resolution to improve compliance would address this. Instead, we have taken a sledgehammer to a nail and destroyed a community.
Picture description: Some of the community who came and spoke at the meeting where this proposal was first put forward by the chair against staff advice.
