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from the DESK of Rehette Stoltz

Hello and welcome to my monthly catch-up about a little bit of everything Gisborne... February 2012...

CLICK here for 2011: * JULY * AUGUST * SEPTEMBER * OCTOBER * NOVEMBER * DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012

FEBRUARY 2012

The old saying “Time flies when you are having fun” is so true!

It feels like just yesterday when the school holidays started, and tomorrow our young ones are back to school for a new year of learning and adventure. What a fun-fulfilled 6 weeks! Like myself, many parents have had lots of fun with their kids over the holidays, but are secretly relieved that the new term has arrived!

The last time I wrote, I was on my way to take part in the Marlborough Marathon. I ran with a bad head cold in the scorching Blenheim sun, and I managed to complete it in 3 hours and 48 minutes. I was the second woman over the finish line, so I was very pleased with my run!

After the marathon, our little family flew over to South Africa, and we spent the most fantastic and relaxing 5 weeks with our families. We stayed at my parents’ beach house near Mossel Bay on the East Coast and we spent our days lounging in the African sun, swimming with the kids and enjoying quality time with our families.

But it is great to be home and my battery is charged for a busy and productive 2012!

We had our first official Council meeting a couple of days ago, and all I can say is…it is going to be a BUSY 4 months! We are now nearly ready to officially start with our Ten Year Plan consultation, and after 16 workshops and lots of debate, we have sorted most of the policies and plans. Some fine-tuning is still being done by the Finance Department, but it will be ready in the next couple of weeks.

A draft Ten Year Plan summary will be sent out to all households in March, and in March and April, we will have formal consultation on the draft plan. This will include community meetings, formal submissions and hearings.
So this is your chance to let us know what you think we should do in our region, so make sure you get your submission(s) in!
We will have submission hearings in May, and in June we will adopt the 2012-2022 Ten Year Plan.

So we have a busy time ahead, but it will be great to have a community plan and goals for the next ten years. Luckily we review the Ten Year Plan every three years, so as priorities change, we can adjust our plan.

I am sad that Lindsay McKenzie is leaving us, as he is doing a great job as CEO of our Council, but I wish him and Liz and Hamish all the best for their new life in the Tasman District.

Well, enjoy the glorious sunshine… I will be back with more news next month.

DECEMBER 2011 / JANUARY 2012

Wow – you know it is Christmas time when the big Christmas tree outside Suncity Pharmacy suddenly pops up! Every shop greet us with carols and the Christmas shopping frenzy takes hold of our nation. Sad but true.

This year has flown by! It feels like I have fitted two years worth of living into 2011 and I am looking forward to a lovely time with family during the holidays. It will also be a great time to catch up with friends and an ideal time to re-charge my battery for a busy 2012.

But before I can go on holiday, I will be slogging away in Blenheim competing in the Marlborough Marathon! Yes – the time has come! I am leaving for Blenheim on Friday, and four months worth of pounding the footpaths will be put to the test this Saturday! So spare a thought for me …

With the general elections behind us, we can now focus on building a stronger and more resilient New Zealand in the next three years. It will be a tough three years as the world struggles through one of the worst financial times. We will have to tighten our belts and take a hard look at how we live. We are not kind to our one and only Mother Earth and we will have to address this sooner than later. To solve these problems, we will have to change our attitudes and ways of live… not easy, but not impossible.

What is going on at Council? Nothing exciting!

We are now at workshop number 12 in preparation for the Ten Year Plan that will come into effect next year. This will be our last official Ten Year Plan workshop for 2011.

We have put an enormous amount of time and effort into this and we will be ready to consult with the Gisborne community in March. We need your feedback and preferences in order for us to prioritise all our major projects.

We received great feedback at our pre-consultation and we are looking forward to listening to your ideas come March. Please visit the GDC website - http://www.gdc.govt.nz/ to take a look at our major projects.

So without further ado… have a blessed Christmas and enjoy a peaceful time with your family and friends. Make time for old friends and enjoy the well-deserved break.

Life is so short… let’s make the most of what we have! May 2012 be kind to us all.

I will write again come February! (wow – that sounds a lifetime away!)

NOVEMBER 2011

Well, what can I say? With the Webb Ellis trophy safely in the hands of the All Blacks, New Zealand can start breathing again! Deon and myself were lucky enough to attend the final match between the All Blacks and France in Auckland, and all I can say is – priceless! It was such a nail biter! The atmosphere in the stands were magical… for maybe half of the time, every person there, were on their feet, cheering on their heroes!

Well done, Richie and your team – you made us all very proud!

But now - back to reality! November is a busy month! All the politicians in the country are getting ready for our general elections. Fences and sport fields are decorated with electoral hoardings and public debates are being organized to give the candidates a turn to discuss their policies and visions.

Be sure to make your mark by voting on the 26th of November – remember that there is also a referendum that asks if we want to keep the MMP system or not, so make sure you get all the information you need on the different voting systems from http://www.referendum.org.nz/.

Another ongoing drama is the Rena environmental disaster that has been threatening the unspoiled nature and marine life in the Bay of Plenty for the past 3 weeks. Hopefully the rest of the crude oil will be removed within the next few days, and then Maritime New Zealand can deal with the shipwreck.

With the holiday season looming and most businesses dependent on tourists visiting the beautiful east coast, everyone will be eager to see the back of this disaster.

What is going on at Council? We are now at workshop number 11 in preparation for the Ten Year Plan that will come into effect next year. It is a massive piece of work with a lot of community input and fine-tuning to take into account before it can be adopted and audited. But we are well on track!

Thank you so much for your feedback about what projects you value and what you would like to see happen in our region.

That gives us a good idea of what projects our community would like us to focus on. Walkways and Cycle ways, the Waipaoa Flood Protection Scheme and the War Memorial Theatre renovations were all high scorers! At this stage, the council officers are looking at different options and costing, and making sure that the Councillors and the public have all the information to make informed decisions.

How time flies! It is only 5 weeks until I compete in the Marlborough Marathon in Blenheim. I have been pounding the pavements come rain or sunshine, and with only 5 weeks to go, I can see light at the end of the tunnel!

Enjoy the fabulous sunshine… aren’t we lucky?
Until next month.

OCTOBER 2011

I love the saying “time flies when you are having fun”, so I can only assume that I must have had so much fun in the past year that I barely noticed it flying by!

I must confess – my first year in Council has been a whirlwind year!

It feels like yesterday that I entered the Chambers for the first time and started my journey in this challenging but exciting governance role. I had a good idea of what to expect as I sat in on a fair amount of meetings before I made up my mind to pursue a career in local politics. Or that is what I thought…

Let me assure you – there is a massive difference between sitting and observing a Council meeting on the one side and actively taking part in informed debate on the other side! The sheer amount of reading and preparation that goes into one Council meeting is not for the faint-hearted. Sometimes our agendas have more than 400 pages – and that is just for one meeting!
I definitely suffered from information overload in those first months!

After the 2010 elections, we were lucky that we had many experienced Councillors that have been there for a while to carry on and make sure it was business as usual while the newbies tried their best to get up to speed! I am sure I speak on behalf of all four new Councillors – it takes a long time to get your head around how Council works and to familiarize yourself with all the areas that we are involved in and make decisions about.

The new Councillors received a lot of support and guidance from the more experienced Councillors and they were more than willing to answer some of our questions in a private email or chat instead of letting us make idiots of ourselves in the Chambers! We were (and still are) actively supported by our very competent and hardworking staff that supply us with all the information to make informed decisions.

I know from letters to the editor that some people think that the Councillors are a bunch of know-it-alls that sit around and discuss nonsense all day whilst eating elaborate lunches (yeah right!).
If there is one thing that I have learned in my first year of Council it is that every Councillor are there because they care about Gisborne and its people. Every decision that we make is well debated by our very diverse group, and always at the front of everyone’s mind is how our decisions will affect the ratepayers. We are after all rate payers ourselves.

I am excited about the year ahead, and I can just hope and pray that my next year in Council will be just as good as the last… and maybe better?
Till next time…

PS. Go the All Blacks!

SEPTEMBER 2011

It is with a song in my heart that I write this column – the best time of year has arrived and we wave goodbye to our frosty friend called winter! I love springtime! Everything is fresh and alive and blossomy.

I am very fortunate to have visitors here from South Africa. My brother and sister and their spouses are here on holiday and we are having a ball! They are enjoying the Gisborne sunshine and Deon and myself have spent yesterday showing off our lovely town. They are very impressed with Gisborne and today we are going to visit the beautiful Tairawhiti Museum and finish of the day with a picnic at Eastwoodhill Arboretum. What a treat!

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So what have we been doing around the Council table?

We have been very busy looking at the different voting systems and what system we would prefer for the 2013 local body elections. The majority of councillors voted in favour of the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) system that we have been using since becoming the GDC in 1989. It is a very popular system that 92% of local bodies use as their preferred voting system. But there was also some support for the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system that is used by all the DHB’s and 6 local bodies. The system is more complicated to understand, but some literature indicates that it might be a system that better represents minority parties.

Public education will be needed if we want people to understand, trust and prefer the more complicated voting system.

We are also in the process to decide how we will go about to review our Local Body Representation – that is, do we have the right amount of councillors to represent our community effectively? We have had a Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) representative who updated us on our options and what would be the best way to take on this project. Advise from him suggests that the best way to go would be to select an independent panel to critically review our representation arrangements and make recommendations to Council. We also have the option to do the review ourselves, but he advised us against it. We will vote on that at our Council meeting at the end of the month.

We are also still busy with our Ten Year Plan (TYP) workshops and you will receive a preliminary update in the “Town and Country Matters” this month of what will feature in our TYP. This is just a heads-up on what we are looking at, and you will make the decisions of what projects you want to see at the top of our list when we formally consult early in 2012, so watch this space!

Enjoy the longer, warmer days and make sure you include Eastwoodhill on your list of places to visit in spring – what a fabulous sight with all the blossoms and new green life – in one word – spectacular!

Until next time…enjoy the sunshine!

AUGUST 2011

After three weeks of cold weather, it looks like winter is taking a break again!?
Honestly, it is confusing my garden… I have seen some blossoms already!

We have had the most fabulous sunny winter days to do fun stuff during the school holidays. The town parks and river walkways have been bustling with young families soaking up the winter sun whilst enjoying the break from school and sport activities. I cannot believe it is “back to school” next week!

Council business has been keeping me very busy in the past couple of months.

Up to now, we have had seven Ten Year Plan workshops to make sure we have everything ready for public consultation early next year. The Ten Year plan is a huge document that sets out everything that we want and need to do in the next ten years. There are thousands of government boxes to tick to make sure we are in line with what Wellington expects of us, and our staff has been reviewing a mountain of paperwork to streamline and align our policies and strategies. It is a massive review and I am very impressed by how our staff members put in the extra mile and give it their all. You can have your say on what you want to see in our 2012-2022 Ten Year Plan when consultation comes up in March next year.

As you can expect, there are 15 Councillors with 15 opinions! I am not saying it is a bad thing, as they represent our very diverse community, but prioritising “what we do” and “how we want to do it” is no easy task! I can assure you that we thoroughly debate every aspect of what Council does and how we can do it better. Every councillor is aware that our community is struggling financially as it is, so we will do everything in our ability to keep our rates down. I know that some people would disagree, but I can assure you - it is true.

At this stage, the GDC is in a sound financial position and personally I think we as a Council have to work very hard to keep it that way. We should not get comfortable and take on more debt… we should be vigilant and spend only what our community can afford.

I was privileged to attend the “Tairawhiti Sports Excellence Awards” in July.

Our region is blessed with so many talented sport stars and it was a very special evening where we could celebrate their many achievements. Well done, Sport Gisborne – Brent, you and your team organised a fantastic evening.

I have just entered the Marlborough Marathon, so I better stop writing and get my running shoes on – I have four months to get myself race fit, so wave out when you see me running around our lovely town!

Enjoy the last month of winter…

JULY 2011

Well, we have been speculating about it for two months, and now we can officially say - winter has arrived! Brrrr….

For those of you that are not yet convinced that winter is here, you should have joined me at Patutahi on Saturday morning at 9am to watch an under-six ripper rugby game. Five layers of winter woolies…check. Gloves …check. Gumboots…check. Raincoat….check. Winter is here, no doubt about it!

What have we been doing Council wise?

The Councillors went on a day long visit to take a good look at the Port operations. They are constantly upgrading the port area and are also in the process of establishing an extra log storage area in Crawford Street. It was great to see how our Port is thriving – well done, Andrew and your team.

On our tour, we also visited the H.B.Williams Library, The Olympic Pool complex and the War Memorial Theatre.
The visit to these Council business units was in preparation for our fifth Ten Year Plan (TYP) workshop.

This workshop focused on all our Capital Projects and we took a good look at what maintenance and/or renovations might be required in order to assure a good service to our community. Services like these makes for a vibrant, involved community, and that is what we want for the people of the Tairawhiti region. At this stage we are systematically prioritising these projects.

Most Councillors agree that the library, the pool and the theatre are all important parts of our community and they will feature high in our TYP priorities.

We still have two workshops to go, and hopefully by then we will have most of our 2012-2022 Ten Year Plan ready for thorough public consultation and sign off that will take place in March 2012. Make sure you get your submission in once consultation starts!

It was fantastic to see such a great turn out at the “What lies beneath” debate.

The mining industry, the environmentalists as well as affected parties and iwi got a fair chance to state their case. It was very informative and I am sure that most people felt that it was sensible to get all parties in one room and give everyone a chance to get their message across. Thank you “Chamber of Commerce” for organizing the debate.

Winter is not all bad though. I love a crackling fire, yummy steaming casseroles and to round it off, a lovely glass of red wine. Mmmmm.

Until next month…stay warm!

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