Barry Scott and I attended a clinic with Councillor Steve Morris at the Papamoa Library in December 2024. Barry is promoting community committees, as a first step towards community boards, with the first committee being setup as a trial for the Arataki and Papmaoa wards. I was along for the ride.
Council is planing to introduce clinics for the Mayor and all of the councillors in 2025. Monique Etherington has been assigned to assist. According to Monique, each of the councillors has a different approach tot he clinics. Probably, after a period of trial and error they will work out what works best, and the clinic formats will converge on that.
Steve is keen to promote the community committees. The idea is to devolve some council functions to the committees which can potentially save money, and will also improve community involvement. It can provide a useful path for community input into council decisions, and also for council to communicate more effectively with the communities.
Typically, the community would nominate a list of suitable candidates. The committee members would be chosen from the list by council. The local councillor would also be on the committee along with one or more council staff.
An interesting idea. Success depends on getting the right people onto the committees, and also getting good support form council.
Re Maori wards. Steve thinks that most of the elected members will want to delay the referendum on Maori wards for as long as possible and after the next national election. If there is a change of government at the election, it is likely that the new government will remove the requirement for a referendum.
We did discuss that it could be included with a by-election, but Steve did not think that was likely.
Post Meeting: we now know that there will be a by-election for the Maori ward. It is unlikely that council will include the referendum with the by-election.
We also discussed the Queen Elisabeth Youth Centre and Memorial Hall. I think that it is wasteful to demolish these buildings in order to construct the proposed aquatic centre. The buildings are being demolished because they occupy the only site that is suitable for the new aquatic centre. The buildings have to go in order to build the aquatic centre.
They do need seismic strengthening and maintenance, but they would then have many years of useful life ahead of them. Tauranga is short of eight indoor courts, and demolishing these building will remove three of the most popular courts from the city.
My feeling is that the aquatic centre is predetermined. It is one of the developer projects so it seems to have priority. A pity. I grew up with those two buildings.
Memorial pool is also old and has some issues. Council had estimated circa $100,000 to upgrade the pool. It is old fashioned and outdoors, but it still works and is fit for purpose. Mr Guthree taught me to swim at Memorial pool.
Similarly, constructing the aquatic centre will almost certainly mean that Otumoetai Pool will be closed. Two reasons. To save money, and to drive the pool patrons to use the aquatic centre.
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