Straight from city council A personal view, by Councillor Steve Morris

As a councillor, you get to meet the most wonderful, community-minded people. From the locals who pick up rubbish along Pilot Bay every morning to the gentleman who repairs and paints park benches around his Papamoa subdivision.

Everyday there are hundreds of volunteers in our city who care for those in need and those around them; they don't ask for thanks, they're just being ‘good neighbours.'

Occasionally, you meet those who take a narrower view of the world; let me introduce you to Mr and Mrs Nimby. Sometimes they're blatant, like the person who shouted 'f*** off, you're not welcome here” to a grandmother and her grandchildren at a new emergency housing village.

Other times they appear incredibly magnanimous, like the person concerned about a newly planted five-foot tree, which when not being a hiding place for rapists, risked being picked up in a tsunami and hurled as a projectile into the unsuspecting public.

Of course, the very minor side benefit of removing it would be a better view!

Sometimes, it's easier to offer up someone else's backyard; like the transport advocate who asked council to ‘show leadership' by putting a cycleway in front of other people's homes but firmly rejected a bus stop in front of their property.

A recent submitter suggested a Marine Research Station shouldn't be located where they park their boat but where other people park theirs!

It's just as well people are prepared to compromise for the ‘greater good' otherwise we'd be a city of Bananas: 'Building absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone!”