Marlborough council establishes subcommittee to decide road names

A new group will be formed to examine road names in Marlborough after councilors criticized developers twice last year for choosing overly English names.

The councilors first clashed in March last year after a developer asked for English-themed street names to be written, some of which were criticized for reeking of “colonial shame.”

Councilors disagreed again two months later when another developer proposed a street name that “invoked royalty.”

The names of the roads in Blenheim’s Rose Manor, first signed by the Marlborough District Council several years ago, included Whitehall Drive, Chapel Close, and Bond St.

Councilmember Cynthia Brooks suggested at the time that the council re-establish a subcommittee to help resolve highway naming issues, which the council agreed to in February.

However, some councilors expressed disapproval, first in February, then again on Thursday, arguing that a subcommittee added “another layer of bureaucracy” to the council’s road naming process.

Councilman Jamie Arbuckle said before last week’s meeting that councilors “should shut up” if the road names comply with council rules.

“We have a policy. If the developer’s name meets the terms of the policy, then the developer should be able to name the roads in the subdivision whatever they want,” Arbuckle said.

“Developers haven’t enjoyed the current process … I think having a subcommittee will not improve them. A subcommittee will have ideas about what their road names should or shouldn’t be.”

Marlborough Mayor John Leggett said at Thursday’s plenary council meeting that he agreed with Arbuckle’s views. However, the subcommittee was agreed in February, so councilors were only able to discuss the terms of the committee on Thursday, not the decision to have a committee.

The new subcommittee would have the power to name or alter the names of the roads in Marlborough, including those proposed by the developers, in accordance with the council’s highway naming policy.

The policy said that new road names must be short, cannot have the same name as an existing road, and must be named after a subject, historical person or event, or be given a traditional Maori name.

The council’s asset and services manager Richard Coningham said in a report that a subcommittee would streamline the naming process and give developers more certainty that their names would be approved.

Beehive Development Limited developer Chris Thornley said after the meeting that he thought a highway naming subcommittee was “excessive.”

“The name of a street is the name of a street. Once it is named, the name of a street becomes irrelevant. We should not spend more money on a subcommittee where nothing really happens.

“We need fewer bureaucratic layers, not more.”

DeLuxe Property Group Limited developer Greg Smith said Thursday that the council’s current road naming process was “painful.”

“There can be delays if councilors start debating the names of the roads in a development, because then you have to wait for the next council meeting for a decision to be made, or one later.”

Councilors clashed over DeLuxe Property Group’s request to name the roads at Rose Manor last year, with some wanting to ditch the “very, very poor” names, while others said they conformed to the naming policy.

The DeLuxe Property Group names were finally approved.

The subcommittee would be chaired by Deputy Mayor Nadine Taylor and would include input from iwi Representative Richard Hunter and Council Members Francis Maher, Cynthia Brooks and Jenny Andrews.

A similar subcommittee intervened after Blenheim’s Omaka Landing street names were removed for being “boring” in 2016.