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And if you have any comments on the layout, content and information provided, let us know, because the Newsletter is yours.
Rotary Hutt City breakfast meetings
Meetings are held 7am to 8.30 am on the first and third Wednesday of the month at Boulcott's Farm Heritage Golf Club, Military Road, Lower Hutt. Please RSVP to chrissi@roll.nz.
For those of you who have not pre-paid, breakfast continues to cost $25 per person, payable on arrival to Chrissi Walker this coming week.
Members, don't forget to check the Duties Roster (Meeting Responsibilities) below for your nominated duty for our next meeting on the 17th of June.
Meeting Responsibilities
Greeter
Walker, Chrissi
Payment Taker
Hughes, Gaylene
Reception Desk
Thomas, Gregory
Opening thought
Geremia-Young, Anna
3 Minute Who Am I?
Brockelsby, Sandy
Intro to Speaker
Colville, Sue
Thanks to Speaker
Harding, Katrina
Quizlett (6 questions about your industry)
Rowell, Bob
Closing thought
Gough, Bruce
President's Report
Ata marie, good morning.
I’m pleased to confirm that we have secured the room at Boulcotts Farm Heritage Golf Club for another year. In order to keep the breakfast cost at $25 per person, we need to continue to provide our own granola/muesli.We’ll be exploring options to cover this cost, including sponsorship or perhaps a movie fundraiser to fund the 24 meetings planned for the year. If you have any other ideas, I’d be delighted to hear them.
Boulcotts Farm has again asked us to prepay as many breakfasts as possible and to guarantee payment for a minimum of 30 breakfasts at each meeting, regardless of attendance.To help manage this commitment and minimise the risk of financial loss to the club, we will once again be asking members to prepay their breakfasts if that's feasible.
At this stage, members will be invoiced for 12 breakfasts, which equates to $300 (12 × $25). This will cover breakfasts through to Christmas and the end of the calendar year. Breakfast invoices will be issued around 1 July and will accompany the annual subscription invoice.
Please note that this breakfast invoice is optional and may be most suitable for Rotabiz members who are able to charge it to their businesses as an operating expense. If you are unable to attend, you may also choose to send a colleague or friend in your place, as your registration will have been prepaid. If your preference is to pay meeting to meeting, we understand.
The Board has agreed to keep the annual membership subscription at $250 per person, despite this amount not fully covering our Rotary International fees. To bridge the gap, we will continue to explore fundraising opportunities such as movie nights and sausage sizzles.
I appreciate that these invoices will arrive at the same time. Payment by credit card is perfectly acceptable.
We are very grateful to the 24 members who prepaid their breakfasts in January when we made the same request. Your support made a significant difference in helping the club manage its costs, particularly as we continue our efforts to attract and retain new members.
Our meeting next week, on 17 June, will be held in the Sharps Room (the smaller room) at Boulcott's Farm Heritage Golf Club, as the larger room has already been booked.
Representatives from the RiverLink project will be speaking about their progress, and members of Rotary Hutt Valley have been invited to join us. With the smaller venue and additional guests, it may be a little cosy, so please RSVP to Chrissi and arrive early to help us accommodate everyone comfortably.
We will also be voting on the Club Bylaws, with Andy Soper overseeing the process.
Our collection for the Foodbank is currently a little short of our target of 1,000 cans, although Linton has done a marvellous job collecting donations at Summerset Boulcott (see photo below). If you have not already contributed, please bring a can or two along on Wednesday. We will be delivering the donations to the Lower Hutt Foodbank on Thursday morning.
Finally, do please join us for our Changeover Dinner at Speights Ale House in Petone on Wednesday 24th June from 6pm. $60 per person, and as it’s to celebrate incoming President Craig, it’s a football themed event (surprise, surprise!!) so wear anything footy-related. Speights have asked for final numbers by Friday 19th June, so do get in quick!
Notice of Special General Meeting to Adopt Bylaws.
Now that the club is reregistered under the new Incorporated Societies Act, we need to adopt bylaws with more details of how we operate. This is notice that a special general meeting will be held during our 17 June club meeting to do this. We will need a quorum of 21 active members.
Here is a link to the proposed bylaws, which you should read: RCHC 2026 Bylaws
Note particularly that the board has decided that an audit or review of the annual accounts should be optional, at the board’s discretion: Bylaw 8, Section 5. Also, the strict Rotary requirement to attend meetings can be softened, and that is done in Bylaw 11.
I want to thank Richard Nabarro for putting most of this together. It was a big job.
An article prepared by Rotary member Allan Brown and published by Scoop that summarises the club's efforts to work with Hutt City Council to save some of our local heritage. Thank you Allan !
News from Hutt Rotary Club
The Rotary Club of Hutt City has formally advised the Hutt City Council that it cannot proceed with its proposal to rescue and adaptively reuse the historic Gibbes Watson Pavilion in the Civic Gardens, because of unsustainable long-term financial liabilities demanded by the Council.
The decision comes ahead of a critical late-May council deadline. It leaves the mid-century architectural landmark — designed by the legendary Sir Ian Athfield as one of his earliest works — facing an uncertain future, with full demolition now a distinct possibility.
A Capital-Neutral Vision for a “Living Building”
Rotary’s business plan offered a transformative co-investment model to save the underutilised asset. The proposal envisioned stripping away the pavilion’s degraded glass and aluminium enclosure to create a vibrant open-air community hub. Outfitted with a high-tech fabric roof featuring a 20-to-25-year low-maintenance lifespan, the upgraded structure was designed to host markets, weddings, musical performances, and outdoor school events.
Project investigations revealed that the initial phase would be completely capital-neutral for ratepayers. The cost for the Council to remove the glass framework was found to be highly comparable to the expenditure already budgeted for full demolition and site regrassing, requiring zero additional upfront capital.
The concept gained immense backing over a two-year period, supported by Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, the Architecture Centre, and the Victoria University of Wellington School of Architecture, where final-year students mapped out designs aligned with the international Living Building Challenge standards.
Voluntarism vs. Commercial Liability
Despite the project’s architectural and community merit, negotiations hit an impasse over ongoing operational costs. Hutt City Council stipulated that the Rotary Club must assume all ongoing long-term liabilities for the building, including insurance, rates, commercial operational management, and future structural maintenance.
“Our project team and Board did everything possible to prove the viability of this asset,” says Katrina Harding, President of the Rotary Club of Hutt City. “However, accepting multi-decade commercial property liabilities of this scale is beyond the reasonable scope of a volunteer service organisation’s resources and governance responsibilities.”
“Accordingly, unless the Council reconsiders the extent of these demands, we are unable to proceed further.”
A Century of Garden City Heritage at Risk
The withdrawal marks a bittersweet moment in a multi-generational relationship. Rotary’s history is woven directly into the fabric of the Civic and Riddiford Gardens, spanning the establishment of the Rotary Children’s Playground in the 1960s, the gifting of the iconic Tutukiwi structure in the 1970s, and decades of running the popular Shapeshifter sculpture exhibitions.
The Club emphasises that the pavilion and the Tutukiwi are critical physical remnants of Lower Hutt’s identity as New Zealand’s finest and most complete expression of the international Garden City movement—an urban planning philosophy dedicated to integrating civic life seamlessly with green parklands.
An Appeal to the Council
With the final decision now resting squarely with the Chief Executive and Councillors, the Rotary Club of Hutt City is urging Council to review the extensive research compiled before sending in the bulldozers.
“We trust that the comprehensive research and architectural investigations we’ve assembled will give Council pause as they determine the final path forward,” Harding says.
“Should the Council ultimately choose demolition, we have formally requested that they incorporate a meaningful form of permanent historical interpretation on the site. The architectural legacy of Sir Ian Athfield and Lower Hutt’s unique Garden City heritage deserves to be acknowledged, even if the physical structure is lost.”
Rotary meeting 3rd June:
Neil Thornton from the NZ Comedy School enlightened us on what it takes to make people comedians. Real ones, not just people who think they're funny themselves, lol.
He showed us how to stand with confidence, even if we aren't feeling confident inside.
Robert updated us on his business Black Gates Optometrists (with a number of clients in the room!), and Richard implored us to collect canned food/tins for the Cans for a Cause project. Donations will be delivered to the Foodbank next week. We're aiming to collect 1000 cans so do please get involved.
Katrina, Robert and Ganesh
Guest speaker, Neil Thornton
Cans for a cause
Rotary meeting: 17 June 2026
The speakers at our next meeting are the Riverlink team, The Hutt Motorway, Melling interchange, Hutt River and Hutt City reshaped.
There will be an opportunity to find out details about the new Lower Hutt project that will change the face of Lower Hutt. Melling will never be the same! Learn about the structures yet to be built and the impact the project will have on our community.
This will be a very interesting presentation with something for everyone.
Members: can you help support Blossom and these two important programmes?
We currently have one individual sponsorship request and two worthwhile programme support opportunities where Rotary members may be able to make a real difference. Blossom is seeking personal support to help her take up an outstanding educational opportunity, while RYDA and IYM are looking for members who can volunteer their time and practical support. Each appeal offers a meaningful way to back young people in our wider community. If one of these opportunities speaks to you, please consider getting involved.
Blossom:
Blossom Dele-Oluwole has approached the club seeking personal sponsorship to help her attend an international debating and public speaking opportunity. Blossom, a local Year 12 student, has been selected as a finalist in the “Learning to Be Heard” Global Public Speaking Challenge run by TED and Immerse Education, and has received a partial scholarship to attend TED Summer School. She has chosen to attend the two-week residential programme in Singapore from 12–25 July, which is the closest and most affordable option for her. This is an outstanding achievement, and individual members may wish to support Blossom as she takes up this exciting opportunity.
IYM Residential is a STEMM camp like no other. Based at Silverstream Retreat in Upper Hutt, this programme is for Year 11 and 12 female students from schools in the greater Wellington region, Wairarapa, Horowhenua and Manawatū.
Over five days 40 like-minded young women will experience hands-on science and technology activities and hear from women who have built careers and businesses in the STEMM sector. Each day, they travel to a variety of science and technology businesses and organisations, research Institutes and tertiary education providers in the Wellington region.
A message from Brooke Turner, Programme Manager of IYM 2026
IYM Residential is seeking additional “camp mums” to help support the 2026 programme from 5–10 July 2026. This inspiring STEMM camp gives Year 11 and 12 young women a unique opportunity to explore science, technology, engineering, maths, and medicine through hands-on learning and real-world experiences. Brooke Turner, Programme Manager for IYM 2026, has advised that while they already have three wonderful camp mums in place, they are still short of support for three days. This could be covered by one volunteer, or shared across two or three people. Camp mums are never on site alone, as there are always two camp mums and two camp sisters present. If this is something you may be able to help with, or if you would simply like to learn more about the role, Brooke would be very pleased to hear from you.
Road Safety Education Limited (RSE) is a not for profit, leading learning organisation operating throughout Australia and New Zealand. RSE are committed to creating communities free from road deaths by equipping young people to take lifelong responsible action through best practise road safety education.
At the heart of the programmes lies Ryda – a whole school approach partnership which supports teachers on the journey as they provide their students with the tools and understanding they need to see themselves as active, responsible road citizens. Ryda features a highly engaging and memorable one-day workshop which front-loads students’ understanding of road safety and gives them the tools, habits and motivation to take action and stay safe on our roads as both drivers and passengers throughout their lives.
Rotary volunteers are also needed to support RYDA workshops for young drivers at local schools. RYDA is a highly regarded road safety education programme that helps students build the awareness, habits, and decision-making skills they need to stay safe on our roads as drivers and passengers. Local Road Safety Educator Sarah Parkinson, who spoke to the club last year, has approached us seeking volunteer support for the workshops listed below. If you are able to help, please consider getting involved.
Sarah Parkinson
Email: wellington@rse.org.nz
Phone: 021 545 012
DATE:
SCHOOLS:
BOOKED STUDENTS:
VENUE:
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED:
30th June
St Bernards
119
Fraser park – Ricoh Sports Building
3
4th August
Hutt Valley High School
220
Fraser park – Ricoh Sports Building
6
5th August
Hutt Valley High School
220
Fraser park – Ricoh Sports Building
6
6th August
Wainuiomata High School
120
Fraser park – Ricoh Sports Building
3
A Reminder about upcoming events:
24th June: Club changeover 6pm. $60pp. Speights Petone, football themed.
District Changeover is on Saturday 27 June at 11 am. Boulcotts Farm
Remember to bring some loose change along to the meeting so you can contribute if you answer a Quizlett question incorrectly :), or wish to "Buy The Box".
If you should have any interesting stories about fellow Rotarians then please pass them onto Craig so he can share them at the meeting. Email: craig@packprod.co.nz
Payment is also now available by Eftpos onsite - no excuses!
Speights have asked for final numbers by Friday 19th June, so do get in quick!
