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THURSDAY DECEMBER 19, 2024
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DECEMBER 19, 2024
2024 Person of the Year
The reluctant advocate
It was the biggest story of the year and resulted in apologies from the mayor and a new chief executive describing it as a “mea culpa” the council would own. Mary Anne Gill, who covered the story all year, speaks to the man who took council on, and won. Jared Milbank, a quiet and unassuming man who would much rather walk his dogs with partner Lorna Mitchell and beaver away in his home office, is our Person of the Year. When the couple read The News’ February 29 story with the headline ‘Put it there!’ Corridor for third bridge revealed’ they realised the house they had bought in Queen St less than three years before, was right in the middle of the Blue Blob, where a road to a bridge would go. “We couldn’t quite believe it, it’s like ‘they’re not going to bowl all the houses down here?’,” said Jared. Lorna and Jared both rang The News for more information as they were unable to get any answers from the council. It was the newspaper they relied on in those early days as no one had consulted with them before the announcement and in the days afterwards. “We’ve learned a lot about the value of reading a local newspaper and it always surprises me to see
them sitting (unread) in people’s letterboxes,” said Jared. A campaign, led by Jared, with prodding and help from their neighbours resulted in an independent review and ended with a major council reset by year’s end. Jared became the reluctant public face, talking to council staff, councillors, community board chair Jo Davies-Colley and then to the community board on March 20 in the public forum. Very few people knew him – other than the neighbours he met at earlier street Christmas parties and they saw in him someone who could take on the fight. The couple, both Kiwis, had been living in Melbourne in March 2020 when the Covid threat loomed. “We thought it was going to last quite a while and we wanted to be back with family. “We emptied out our apartment, put stuff in storage and got back here,” said Jared. They moved in with Lorna’s mother on her lifestyle block in
Kumeu. She had been unable to sell because a bypass – ironically also represented by a blue blob - was planned around the village. A window of opportunity came to sell, and she did. In February 2021, they bought a house with a granny flat in Cambridge paying well above the odds in those heady days. Both work from home – Jared is a specialist IT consultant for clients in Australia and Lorna does drug discovery research, managing people in labs around the world. At the community board public forum he calmly presented the neighbourhood’s case impressing Davies-Colley. “People were shocked like they had been in a car accident shocked,” said Jared. “Shocked in a sense like people that are going to do not rational things, and I don’t think the magnitude of that got read by the councillors who heard them.
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Our person of the year, Jared Milbank in the neighbourhood and street he helped save. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
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