New Wellington City Council Chief Executive Kevin Lavery has been in Wellington for 10 weeks. He says he misses British television, British TV news, and his family. We sympathise.
Unfortunately, he also seems to be missing the point that he is a paid servant of Wellington City Council and of Wellington ratepayers, not their master. Not content with proposing the demolition of Wellington Town Hall, he has now told The Wellingtonian that:
“I could understand the debate over the Basin Reserve flyover, but the decision has been made and it’s time to move on, just making sure there is good mitigation.”
It seems to have escaped Dr Lavery’s attention that no decision has been made about a Basin Reserve flyover. Wellington City Council voted neither to support nor oppose a flyover, and not only has no resource consent been issued for a flyover, no resource consent application has yet been made.
And as for mitigation – if Dr Lavery thinks that a 9-metre-high, 380-metre-long flyover can be mitigated, then he is living on a different planet to the rest of us.
Wellingtonians pay Kevin Lavery a very handsome salary to do his job. We suggest he stops trying to set the agenda and gets on with the work a paid employee of Wellington’s ratepayers should do.