"That sounds a bit overblown, but it's true. I think it's just delightful to have a whole lot of young people coming here. That age group is so enthusiastic."
Sailing, cross-country and gymnastics opened the tournament, as well as two sold-out opening ceremony shows at ASB Arena.
Brownless was there, as he had been the year before.
"It was just like being at some sort of rock festival - the atmosphere, and they're all excited."
The Tauranga Intermediate School Kapa Haka Group helped open the 15th Anchor AIMS Games. Photo/ file
Three-year-old Ocean Stephen returned home to Waihi after receiving life-changing surgery in the United States.
Her mother, Kristen Waite was humbled by the response from the Waihi community and strangers who helped raise $150,000 to give her little girl a chance at a normal life.
Tears formed as she recounted the story of how Ocean was "perfect in every way" until she started trying to pull herself up as a baby.
"I noticed her toes were curling up and she was going up on tippy toes and her feet were turning inwards."
At 14 months old, following advice from her Plunket nurse, her doctor suspected it was cerebral palsy and referred them to a paediatrician.
Kristen Waite with daughter Ocean Stephen. Photo/ file
Protesters blocked a notorious stretch of State Highway 2 between Tauranga and Katikati on September 16.
Western Bay of Plenty residents were fed up with the high toll of fatal and serious injury crashes on the highway were calling for authorities to do more to make the high-risk road safer.
The protest came after a black week on Western Bay highways. Three fatal crashes claimed four lives in four days. The crashes were on SH2, near Pahioa Rd, and again on SH2 near Pukehina and another on SH29 in the Kaimai Range.
Campaign spokesman Matthew Farrell said SmartGrowth predicted another 43,000 homes were needed to house a population increase of 250,000 in Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty in the next three decades.
State Highway 2 was already well over capacity, he said.
Residents blocked part of SH2 on September 16. Photo/ file
The Bay of Plenty Times reported that community housing provider Accessible Properties had been paid more than $5.7 million by the taxpayer for methamphetamine testing and clean-up in former state houses in Tauranga and the Western Bay.
But under the new meth testing guidelines a lot of that money appeared to have been wasted, with 122 properties - in hindsight - unnecessarily fixed up and their residents moved out.
Like Housing New Zealand (HNZ) and many private landlords, Accessible was following the national standard that was in place at the time.
However, an Official Information Act response by HNZ revealed that just 25 homes would be tested above the recommended level under the new meth contamination threshold.
That amounted to about 2 per cent of the 1138 houses sold to Accessible Properties by HNZ on April 1 last year.
Yet 147 of those properties - about 13 per cent of the total transfer - had or were having decontamination and remediation work done on them, for which Accessible had claimed an estimated $5,707,181 from HNZ.
