Members of an east Auckland community have raised concerns about a range of issues in their neighbourhood with the Howick Local Board.
Brian Brown and Alan Davies of the Huntington Park Residents and Ratepayers Association addressed the board at its recent monthly business meeting.
Davies said broken yellow lines the group asked Auckland Transport (AT) to install on Huntington Drive have been installed “to a degree”.
“We’d like to get those lines further up, to track a bit further.
“Judder bars [requested] on Huntington Drive looks like a ‘no’.
“We get a lot of traffic coming through bypassing the bottleneck at the Ti Rakau Drive lights.
“They do a short circuit through our area.
“It’s creating more traffic and some of them are definitely not doing the required speed limit.”
Davies told the board there are uneven footpaths in the area which had been addressed “to a degree”.
“It’s only a patch-up job with tar seal. At least people won’t trip over them.
“It looks a bit untidy but that’s what we’ve got to put up with.”
He said the group also wants security cameras installed in Huntington Park.
Davies said he’d provided the board’s chairperson, Damian Light, and deputy chair, Bo Burns, with a letter from Howick Police sergeant Brett Meale, “who is backing what we would like to do and is supporting our application for funding to get these cameras”.
Brown said having number plate recognition [NPR] cameras at the three entrances to Huntington Park would be helpful.
“There have been a lot of cars being abandoned and broken into and all sorts of things like that.
“The NPR cameras would record all the number plates coming in and out and that would be monitored by the police so they can track the locals from a visitor.
“That’s quite an expensive option as those cameras are around $10,000 each.”
Brown said another option would be to have a network of cameras on residents’ homes.
“Some people would pay to buy those cameras and some you might want to fund as they’re a prime position to have a camera.
“We and the police would have the technology to log into any of those cameras if needed.”
Davies told the board the group wants to keep Huntington Park as crime-free as possible as law breaking affects land and house values.
He and Davies also raised the issue of rubbish being dumped at the back of The Hub business complex on Ti Rakau Drive and broken curbing along Huntington Drive.
“This is halfway around Huntington Park, just on the bend by the park,” Davies said.
“There are two gardens on either side but this sort of curbing is awful.
“I think it’s a simple job for the council to get rid of that concrete. It’s terrible, it’s awful.”
The board’s members asked Davies and Brown questions about the issues they’d raised before voting to ask AT for an update on the group’s service request regarding broken yellow lines on Huntington Drive and speeding vehicles on that road.
