BayBuzz has just received snippets of notes taken secretly at a recent meeting of the Hawke’s Bay Developers Society.

Our informant was hiding in a coat closet when she took the notes, so comments overheard cannot be attributed to specific participants with total confidence. But here is a taste of what she overheard …

Voice 1: “On this Ocean Beach thing, we can just confuse and exhaust the public. We can have submissions, hearings, more submissions, then change our proposal and start all over. Even the Maloneys won’t be able to keep up.”

Voice 2: “How about if we give it a fancy name like “charette”? Then the public will REALLY think they’ve been consulted.”

Voice 3: “It’s all in the math … we propose 5,000 units at Ocean Beach, the public overwhelmingly demands zero, and the Council — in true Solomon-like manner — wisely “compromises” with only 2,500. The public declares victory, and we get all the units we want.”

Voice 2: “If that doesn’t work, we can call it a farm park.”

Voice 1: “Don’t worry, Lawrence said he’d take care of it.”

Voice 3: “By the time we screw up the coastline, our kids will be living in Australia anyway.”

Voice 1: “It’s the principle of the thing. I’m tired of people complaining that developers have no aesthetic taste. I mean, you can’t see any other houses from my property.”

Voice 2: “Next agenda item … beachfront development at Haumoana. We’ve got to get this ball rolling before global warming scares buyers off.”

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