Let’s help Wellington SPCA into a new home

Welling­ton City Coun­cil would like your views on the draft Long Term Plan 2012–22. The draft plan sets out what the Coun­cil is propos­ing to do over the next ten years. Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the Welling­ton City Coun­cil Draft Long Term Plan runs from the 16th April to 18th May 2012. This is your chance to have a say — your sup­port will make all the dif­fer­ence.

There are a whole bunch of things involved in the long term plan that the Welling­ton­ista col­lec­tive­ly and indi­vid­u­al­ly have opin­ions on. Hope­ful­ly there will be more posts about those soon. But today I’d like to talk to you about an issue that’s super close to my heart*: get­ting the Welling­ton SPCA into a new build­ing so that they can con­tin­ue to pro­vide an amaz­ing ser­vice for the com­mu­ni­ty.

If you’ve been to the New­town cen­tre, you’ll know that while it is full of adorable ani­mals and real­ly ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple, it is also crazy cramped, old and falling-downy. The small space means that it’s that much hard­er to have prop­er iso­la­tion spaces to pre­vent dis­eases from spread­ing, and there’s no room for new ini­tia­tives. It’s also down a real­ly long pot-holed dri­ve­way, and there’s very lit­tle park­ing around.

Mean­while, the old Fever Hos­pi­tal up in Mount Vic­to­ria is sit­ting emp­ty apart from van­dals. Here’s the sit­u­a­tion in the words of Welling­ton SPCA:

The Fever Hos­pi­tal on Alexan­dra Road (also known as the Old Chest Hos­pi­tal and owned by Welling­ton City Coun­cil), a his­tor­i­cal­ly-rich Her­itage build­ing in the heart of Welling­ton, remains the pre­ferred des­ti­na­tion for us. The Coun­cil have stat­ed that we are the pre­ferred ten­ant and have voiced a desire to see us in the build­ing as soon as pos­si­ble.

The Fever Hos­pi­tal site will pro­vide a her­itage home for a her­itage com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tion. It will con­vert a dis­used human hos­pi­tal to an ani­mal one with an edu­ca­tion­al focus. Locat­ed in the cen­tre of the cap­i­tal it places us where we need to be; at the heart of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Welling­ton City Coun­cil have exist­ing oblig­a­tions to com­plete a large amount of cap­i­tal works on the build­ing before we can com­mence our own con­struc­tion work, and ongo­ing main­te­nance once the build­ing is ten­ant­ed.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly the Coun­cil has decid­ed it does not have the funds avail­able to com­plete this work, nor is there fund­ing bud­get­ed for the next 10 years.

Obvi­ous­ly, the coun­cil has to think care­ful­ly about where it spends its mon­ey, but Welling­ton SPCA, which does vital work but receives no direct** gov­ern­ment fund­ing, is absolute­ly deserv­ing. For more infor­ma­tion and/or to sign a peti­tion, check out the Rehome the SPCA site.

* Full dis­clo­sure: I worked for the Welling­ton SPCA for a cou­ple of months last year, and I con­tin­ue to fos­ter cats for them.

** Ani­mal inspec­tors are trained by MAF, but that’s it.