In the Waitemata Area, CPPS operates community work in North Shore City, Waitakere City and the Rodney District as far north as Warkworth. Find contact details for all locations the Waitemata Area.
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Excerpt from Community Works Issue 3, June 2005 |
Offenders serving community-based sentences are proving invaluable in caring for Auckland’s popular west coast recreation spots.
Supervised work parties from the Waitakere area put in 4500 hours’ work around west coast regional parks last year, mostly around Piha, Karekare and Anawhata.
Park Ranger Andy Pedersen says a lot of the work’s involved rebuilding and improving walking tracks in the rugged coastal terrain.
“All these tracks are surfaced with a mixture of sandstone and cement. It’s hand mixed and hand carried and hand placed. They carry it up in bags and it’s very heavy. They earn their hours, they really work.”
This summer, offenders used hand tools to dig a lookout platform from a clay hillside on the Kitekite track to improve the view of a waterfall there.
Andy says every crew gets a pep talk about the value of the work they’re doing. “They’re working for the environment when they’re working for me and they absolutely love it. A few of them start pretty slow. It’s a very good education for them.”
Andy, who’s been a park ranger for 21 years, says offender work parties have always had a role in developing and maintaining the parks.
“They’ve saved an enormous amount of money and done a superb job. A lot of those jobs would not be done by normal contractors, or they’d need special equipment that we simply don’t have the budget for.”
Waitakere Service Manager Karl Bethell says the ongoing partnership between the ARC and Community Work is a valuable one.
“We have been working with Andy and the Auckland Regional Council for years, but the partnership’s really blossomed in the past three years. We now get in at the planning phase of projects and, where possible, provide offenders who have the right skill sets to make sure that each project is successful. We also send offenders to learn new skills so they are more employable when they finish their sentence.”
Karl says ARC has also offered agency placements for individual offenders. “The latest one is getting one of offenders to build a huge macrocarpa bench seat, which will be used as alookout for the Kitekite falls. We have had some amazing feedback from the offenders when they see how many people use the tracks and the areas they have worked on.”
Other satisfying projects saw offenders cutting firewood from pine trees, which have become a noxious weed in the scenic area. The wood was distributed to local elderly residents in time for winter. Andy says more unwanted trees will be recycled in the same way this year.
At Arataki, a bush camp hosting thousands of school children each year, offenders were assigned the task of splitting firewood into kindling-sized pieces – all by axe and tomahawk. Andy says it’s a job no regular contractor would take on because of the labour involved.
Offenders also shifted 200 tonnes of metal on the Kitekite track, walked by 30,000 people each year, and maintained Lion Rock track – the most-used track in the Waitakere area with around 100,000 visitors.