Renwick Hall

I am a fourth generation Renwick person who, with my parents Ken and Jean Hanson and my brother Dennis, was heavily involved with the fundraising, painting, furnishing etc of the Renwick Community Hall.

I do not for one moment wish to criticise the sterling work that the old hall committee has done over the past 29 years, with Betty Boyce, Helen Miller, Jim Cresswell, Murray Newman and many others giving hundreds of voluntary hours to "the cause".

When our prime minister Rob Muldoon opened the hall he made the following statement in the Wellington Evening Post on April 17, 1982:

"I find it remarkable that a township of just over a thousand people, plus 7000 or so in the surrounding area, should raise about $140,000 [about $370,000 today] or an average of $80 per head, in five years or so since fundraising was set up."

Mr Muldoon went on to say that he was in favour of growth, and hoped Renwick would grow, but gently, and that "nothing which you value as a community is lost in growing".

This is exactly why it is called a community hall.

I believe that if the hall committee had been able to access the funding that Renwick School were contractually obligated to provide for the ongoing maintenance of the hall, then this whole debacle could have been avoided.

LLOYD HANSON, Blenheim