Houghton Valley Community Newsletter
30 August, 2012
What’s next for the Houghton Valley Newsletter?: From modest beginnings, as a means to keep a few people in touch about the community garden, the Houghton Valley Newsletter is now distributed to 165 households every two weeks.
To date content has been limited to items of general interest – the upgrade of the Houghton Bay intersection, proposed changes to the bus service, civil defence, reserve restoration working bees, the archaeological dig etc. The only ‘commercial’ information promoted a unit for households for civil defence emergencies.
The objective of this ‘think piece’ is to initiate a discussion about if the newsletter could also be used as a local buy/sell/swap or ‘free cycle’ communications channel. If you want to lease a garage for temporary storage, hire a student over the holidays for a clean up task, sell garden furniture or firewood or give it away – why not do that locally where possible? Another example in an earlier issue was where Miranda of Hornsey Rd was looking for a studio to rent for two days a week.
We believe a number of people would be interested and that it’s worth a trial. Opening up the newsletter in this way will require the development of some guidelines. One requirement could be the initiator should be a local person and the product or service likely to be of interest to local people. One possibility is to include all such information in an attachment so people can choose to look at the information or not.
What do you think? Feedback will be published in the next newsletter, meanwhile if you have a commercial notice you would like published send it in.
A message from Te Raekaihau Coast Care: “Now that the worst of winter is over we will be gathering on the Point to do our planting for this year on Sunday 16 September 10 am – 12 midday. We will also be participating in the annual Wellington-wide coastal cleanup taking place at the same time. Council has planted many more plants in the area we previously planted in to create a coastal shrubland. Large numbers of the plants had died, many went missing so the replacement species are different and hardier. Our planting this time will be to fill in and soften the boundaries between the carpark and the rest of the Point and help create a more natural looking distribution. Council will bring some grubbers to help with the hard pan that exists in some places. Bring along any tools you may find useful.
A recent development for our group has been the partnership we are in the process of creating with the Te Raekaihau Restoration Group, one of the several community groups in Houghton Valley generally, that come together regularly for their various activities. As the Point is part of the same landscape that TRiG are restoring it makes sense to work together and draw upon the local community for ongoing involvement and support as key individuals in our group move on.
The continuation of our group is important and we invite anyone who would like to join us for occasional meetings and activity plans. Your continued support is appreciated. If you would like more information about or be involved with the restoration of the rest of the headland behind and up to the Point you can get more information about TRIG on their Facebook Group. [Now Te Ohu o Te Raekaihau] See you all then.” – Sunita.
Regards Norman and Grant