Long term and the here and now

Mayoral candidate: Rehette Stoltz. File picture

Opinion

It is back to business at the council this week. I hope everyone had some time off in the past month, and the opportunity to relax with friends and family.

On Thursday the council has its first official meeting for 2017. It is a Future Tairawhiti meeting where we discuss big-ticket items and take a helicopter view of all the council’s projects and responsibilities. It is great to start our year this way — reviewing how and why we do what we do. We will cover a broad range of subjects.

First up on the agenda, we are starting work on our 2018-2028 Long-Term Plan. Council officers are already working hard behind the scenes to get the timeframes sorted and signed-off in order for us to get this massive piece of work ready to present to our community for feedback in early 2018 and formal sign-off at the end of June 2018. We will be asking for your input and feedback regularly throughout this process, so let us know if you have any great ideas on how to make our place even better.

We will be updated on our cycleways programme, our in-house gardening transition (it had a bumpy start), our Regional Transport Plan (2018-2028) as well as our proposed uni-plan. We will also have two workshops after our meeting. We will have a finance workshop to alert us early on in the Ten Year Plan process on what projects we are committed to at this stage and what budgetary constraints there might be to consider. We will also have a workshop to discuss and brainstorm the Waikanae to Waipaoa Land Use project. The council has been looking at this area for a long time and we have received several suggestions from the public about what they would like to see in this beautiful, prime location.

The only agenda item that might ruffle a few feathers is the proposed interim boat trailer parking solution. Council staff have been working with stakeholders — boat owners, business owners, the port company and the wider public — to find a temporary solution to ease congestion around the Shed Three area during the busy summer period. Safety concerns around the mixed-use area have been ongoing for all users.

To put it simply — in the area directly in front of the boat ramp, there is not enough space to accommodate a large number of boat trailers as well as the cars from the commercial businesses that occupy Shed Three.

Everyone agrees that it is a shared space. Boat users feel strongly that it is the only area in Gisborne to let your boat in the water, and that the area should be prioritised for this use.

The council has been working with designers and the inner harbour stakeholder group to come up with a workable solution to temporarily address the parking concerns while the larger project — the inner harbour project — is completed. The expectation is that the completed inner harbour project would address the concerns of all users and see the area designed appropriately to accommodate the needs of all users. In the meantime, a temporary solution is on the cards — but not all users are happy with what is proposed. So it might be a case of going back to the drawing board again to work on a temporary solution that has buy-in from all users.