The last remnants of Te Awamutu Women’s Institute will be swept away when its faded plaque is removed from a dilapidated sign at the Ōhaupō Road entrance to the town.
Welcome to Te Awamutu sign
Te Awamutu and Kihikihi Community Board chair Ange Holt told members the faded plaque would soon be removed from the brick sign after the board allocated $1725 for a spruce up in September.
Ange Holt
A faded sign carrying the moto “For home and country” is all that remains of the town’s Women’s Institute, the Waikato having three institutes in Hamilton and one in Te Pahu. Another sign is completely lost, with no clue of what group it commemorates, leaving a blank white plaque behind.
The community board has been discussing the state of the sign, and what to do with it, since June.
“There’s some signs on there like the Women’s Institute one that are gone,” Holt said.
“But we probably need to try and advise as many service groups as possible if they want to be on the sign. We think we need to at least invite everybody to be on it.”
Holt said the town’s service groups were meeting to discuss a plan.
“I will get a better idea on who wants to do what and what’s possible from that support in that space,” she said.
“One of the ideas is instead of having all these individual signs, that we get a sign board done and the logos put on, because we might be able to make it a little more compact and unform, rather than having all these different sorts of things stuck to the sign.”
Lou Brown
Te Awamutu councillor Lou Brown said any group benefitting from having their name on the sign should contribute to the cost.
Board member John Wood asked if the RSA could be invited to the meeting.
“I can’t add the RSA in because I didn’t organise the service groups,” Holt said. “It’s their own function that they do.”
Altrusa had expressed interest in cleaning the sign.
