Dear Mayor Goff, If the Council agrees to support the Mt Albert Local Board’s masterplan to redevelop the Chamberlain Park 18 hole course, it would mean that ratepayers in the rest of the city have to fund a project that actually reduces their own welfare and amenity opportunities. This allocation of funds in the already straitened circumstances of the draft Council Budget makes no sense in any circumstances. To sustain an MFAT-developed representational skill (that you might recall), I occasionally play this course. Very often I join players who are certainly not in the higher earning cohorts, are frequently Maori, Pacifica, or Indian and other Asian migrants, and live for example in Otahuhu, Manukau or other near and far Auckland suburbs. They are perhaps less vocal a constituency and their concerns may attract less attention, though I hope not. The sponsors of the CP redevelopment proposal, rather more comfortable Aucklanders in its neighbourhood, already have access to the first-rate ‘active and passive recreational spaces’ they seek more of, very nearby in Western Springs and a number of sports fields in their own and adjacent Local Board areas. The redevelopment would result in loss of the only relatively affordable 18 hole course this side of the bridge and not only reduce the amenity the city, via the Council, delivers to a no less worthy subset of its ratepayers but charge these and us all for doing so. Please do not support the proposal for funding in the 2017/18 Council budget. The case against CP redevelopment is well made in the attached Herald article. Yours sincerely, (TJ Hannah)