An Invercargill councillor who gave a stern word to staff over a “traumatic” incident at a local cemetery has refused to reveal the details of what happened.<\/p>\n
By Matthew Rosenberg, Local Democracy Reporter <\/p>\n
Councillor Andrea de Vries told a council meeting on Tuesday she had been contacted about a “pretty traumatic experience” at Greenpoint Cemetery.<\/p>\n
She said the incident was upsetting to talk about, and asked council staff why drainage was not being prioritised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to have a provision or something in place that allows us to bury people with dignity regardless of whether or not there is drainage in there.<\/p>\n
“Otherwise we shouldn\u2019t be offering it as a level of service and we should be very clear with our community about what they will be receiving if they purchase a plot in our cemeteries,” she said.<\/p>\n
Council manager parks and recreation Caroline Rain said she was aware of the incident and indicated drainage had not been undertaken in advance at Greenpoint.<\/p>\n
Local Democracy Reporting contacted de Vries about the situation, but she would not divulge what had happened to protect the privacy and dignity of affected families.<\/p>\n
People had experienced drainage issues at all of the city\u2019s cemeteries over the years, de Vries said.<\/p>\n
Rain also declined to provide more details about the incident and cited the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.<\/p>\n
She said the council could refuse to respond to questions to protect the privacy of a person or people, including that of the deceased.<\/p>\n
A combination of high groundwater and prolonged rainfall contributed to drainage issues at the site, Rain said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese conditions can result in some waterlogging in parts of the cemetery during wetter months, and are typical of the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discussion about Greenpoint Cemetery took place at a long-term plan workshop where topics included parks and reserves, social housing and public toilets.<\/p>\n
The cemetery is located near Bluff, and burials were still possible there, Rain said.<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Invercargill councillor who gave a stern word to staff over a “traumatic” incident at a local cemetery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,15488],"class_list":["post-545614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-southland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}