Council seeks early input

4 August 2014Waipa District Council is launching a campaign to encourage more and different voices to be heard before councillors make decisions around long-term spending plans next year.

Work is underway on pulling together a draft 10-year-plan to identify spending priorities from 2015-2025. A first cut of the plan will be available after Christmas and will opened for formal consultation in March 2015.

But chief executive Garry Dyet said waiting until early next year for council to hear from the community was too little, too late given what's at stake.

We are talking about hundreds of millions of ratepayer's dollars. Decisions made as part of the 10-year-plan will help determine the shape of the district for many years ahead, particularly given some of the big challenges we're facing around water and other growth-related issues, he said.

We want people involved a lot earlier and we'd like to hear a far greater range of views, including the views of young people and young families who are often silent when it comes to council issues. That means offering different ways to connect and make sure those views are heard and taken into account.

Next week, the council will launch a programme to engage Waipa people in a variety of ways, including via the Youth Council, local media, the web, and council's facebook site, www.facebook.com/waipadistrictcouncil.

Local papers have indicated they will support the call for early input by running stories on key issues and also encouraging new voices to be heard via the paper and their own facebook sites. Those issues include funding decisions to be made around water and wastewater infrastructure, potential spending on walking and cycling routes, the Cambridge pool, Te Awamutu community hub and proposed roading projects.

We're expecting that a lot of other issues will be raised as well - nothing's off the table, Mr Dyet said.

That's good, that's what this is about. You can't have an informed debate if people aren't aware of what's going on and councillors can't make the right decisions if they don't get a clear steer from the wider community.

Ends

For further information please contact:

Jeanette Tyrrell (on behalf of council) 027 5077 599