Tracey at one of the many events she attends as mayor. Photo / Leanne Warr
Tracey at one of the many events she attends as mayor. Photo / Leanne Warr
Tararua District mayor Tracey Collis will run for a third term when local-body elections are held later this year.
Tracey Collis is standing for a third term for mayor. Photo / Supplied
First elected as a councillor in 2013, she decided to put her name forward for the mayoralty in 2016.
Collis, from Eketahuna, said she had been lobbying and advocating for change.
"The key for me was to be on the other side of the table to understand and influence policy decisions, ensuring policy was workable before being implemented."
She said people and community had always been her passion and, when she became a district councillor, she was able to combine her skills working with and putting people, the economy and the environment into all decisions.
One of the things she enjoyed about being mayor was connecting with people and communities in the district.
"Tararua district has so many amazing people doing great things to improve our lives, our economy and our environment right across the district."
The area where Te Ahu a Turanga, the Manawau-Tararua Highway, is now being built - one of the highlights of Tracey Collis' mayoralty.
Collis said one of the best moments of her time over her past two terms had been around Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatu-Tararua highway.
She said a collaborative approach with other mayors was very successful.
"To be able to watch this develop, offering employment opportunities, economic development through the social procurement, and contributing to our population growth."
The new highway would replace the Manawatu Gorge as the main arterial route between Palmerston North and the Tararua District.
Collis said the opportunities the new road would bring were endless.
She said it was "pretty impressive" to have seven mayors and the chair of the Horizons Regional Council fly to Auckland to support her and Palmerston North mayor Grant Smith as they addressed the board on the importance of the road connection.
"The opportunities this will bring economically for us are going to be exciting to watch and I would like to be here to see this to its completion and celebrate with our district as mayor when the highway is opened in December 2024."
Collis said she was keen to continue representing rural mayors on Accelerate 25, a regional economic programme focused on growing regional prosperity.
"The importance of our rural communities requires good strong representation around the table."
Another "feather in the Tararua District cap" was getting the funding to upgrade Route 52.
Collis said the council had taken lessons from the Manawatu-Tararua highway project by incorporating social outcomes, local procurement and employment into the Hurahi Tuhono - Weber to Wimbledon project.
She said that, as soon as the project was nearer to completion, the process would be continued by lobbying for the second part of the Route 52 upgrade by securing funding for the 25km from Weber to Pongaroa.
Another focus was improving rural digital connectivity which she said would give the community a stronger voice regionally and nationally to upgrade services for the district.
Collis said one of her best achievements as mayor was seeing the impact of Connect Tararua, which was led by the community and supported by the council to improve connectivity and resulted in an additional eight cellphone towers.
There were two sites that were advocated strongly for - one at Alfredton and the other at Weber - that hadn't received support from funders.
"Weber was because of the topography and cost with the small number of properties that would benefit from improved connectivity."
She said advances in technology would now enable Connect Tararua to reboot the project in rural areas that continued to have little or no coverage.
"Cost-effectively, technology will be the game-changer that will enable Connect Tararua to carry on with the project with the emphasis no longer on tower builds."
Recently, a house in Waitahora burned to the ground, with the occupants delayed from alerting emergency services for 15 minutes due to having no signal.
Collis said health and safety risks had been raised consistently during advocacy for improvements in connectivity and the issue would continue to be highlighted to Central Government.
