By Aidan Ellims
Happy New Year to everyone, although we are at the end of January some would ask: where has the summer been? It has certainly been unseasonal, although the weather has played ball for Toast Martinborough, Cruize Martinborough and fingers crossed for Martinborough Fair.
At the last council meeting of 2024 which occurred in November, we received the petition that Leah Hawkins and Dean Di Bona had promoted calling that rates increases for the upcoming Long Term Plan be capped at 3% in line with inflation.
It was impressive that over a thousand ratepayers/residents had signed the petition and I commented that it would great if we could have that number of submissions for our next Long Term Plan.
After the meeting, council staff invited the petition organisers and other interested residents to a workshop where the processes that staff and councillors had already been working through were explained. Information was shared by staff to residents on the factors which impact council and how the rates are set. I felt that it was beneficial to be sharing that information with others and residents who attended provided unsolicited positive feedback.
Throughout the last half of 2024, councillors and staff have had 10 workshops discussing this year’s Long Term Plan. During these workshops, we have all been very much aware of the pressures our communities are under and there has been much debate around the Council table. Staff have reviewed their budgets multiple times and councillors have reviewed many capital projects that were forecast from the previous LTP in 2021 and planned for upcoming years as well as operational costs with the aim to keep rate increases low.
The LTP Consultation Document has been finalized and is now with the Auditors. It will be published shortly after you receive this Martinborough Star and then you will see what the proposed rate increase is for the next year.
Consultation opens on 28 February for a month and during that time councillors and staff will be holding meetings and drop-in sessions for residents/ratepayers to discuss the LTP and hear your feedback/thoughts. We want to hear what you think about the Plan and what is important to you.
It is crucial that you provide a submission so councillors can take your feedback into consideration when deliberating on the LTP later in May. Like I said earlier, I would really like to see a thousand submissions, approximately 10% of our population have an input into this LTP.
Once you have read the LTP consultation document, please reach out to councillors, attend the drop-in sessions/meetings, share your thoughts/feedback and provide a submission.
I look forward to reading a thousand!!!!
If you wish to contact me to discuss issues, please email me on aidan.ellims@swdc.govt.nz
