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

As Steven Joyce opened Tauranga's second harbour bridge, a plane towed a banner overhead reading 'Thank you Winston.”

Peters wasn't invited to the opening despite negotiating the project's construction, without tolls, in the Labour-NZF Coalition Agreement.

Even National stalwarts, like myself, didn't think it fair but in politics sometimes those that take the bow aren't those who gave the performance!

In 2017, a section of the Mount base-track fell 30m down a cliff. A stair bypass was quickly built and we tasked staff to produce a long-term fix with a preliminary budget of $2.2m. When detailed investigations were complete in 2019, it was determined that the whole south-western section of the base-track would need to be bypassed with rock retaining for the fix to last 75 years at a cost of $5.3m.

While it would take time, I favoured this option because of the 'do it once and do it right” principle. So did the owners of Mauao.

However, Council declined to increase the budget to that level; favouring a more affordable fix of just the slip. On August 28, Mayor Brownless was to meet Mauao Trustees to seek approval for a 'quick-fix”. Unfortunately, due to back-to-back tangi, this meeting was rescheduled till after Council elections in October.

When the meeting finally did take place, the trust agreed and works commenced soon after. Like poor Winston, the pins were set up by Mayor Brownless and CEO Marty Grenfell for a new Mayor to knock down, but let's hope something else doesn't come down; the $700,000 quick-fix only has an expected life of 10-15 years!