Te Kaunihera ā-Rohe o
Ōtorohanga
Next year (2021) the Ōtorohanga District Council has to develop a new long term plan (LTP) for our District – that’s about setting Council’s intended direction and priorities for the next 10 years, and will include the projects, activities and services aligned with that. We’ll look to incorporate any longer term COVID-19 recovery actions into our next LTP – that way we can make sure we’ve got the priorities right for the future.
To help with our next LTP, we are doing something a bit different. We are getting out into the community during July and August to talk to and hear from residents, business owners, community groups and organisations about what’s important for the future. We all want a positive and prosperous future, but what does that look like and what do we need to do to get there?
Our world is constantly changing – COVID-19 has reinforced that!
Looking back 30 years, the nature and scale of change since 1990 has been immense. For a start, over half of our District’s residents hadn’t been born! What will our District look like in 2050? While no-one can predict the future, we do know that most of the facilities and infrastructure built 30+ years ago is still being used and going strong today. So, whatever investment decisions we make in the next few years will need to serve the community for at least the next 30 years.
In planning for the future, and preparing for change, having greater community resilience, flexibility and adaptability will be important. We are sure you’ll want this for your Council too. So we need to invest prudently and deliver the right services and levels of service - to not only deal with the issues of today, but also support a prosperous future for our District.
Helping to build the sort of future everyone would want is not something the Council can (or should) do alone. We all need to work together on this. That’s why we’re launching Ōtorohanga 2050 – it’ll be an opportunity for everyone to get involved, and share thoughts and ideas about the future they’d like to see for our District.
The Next Steps
We’ll collate all the feedback received from the Drop-in sessions and feedback forms. The feedback will be available to view through this website from early September, and a summary will be published in local newspapers and through Council’s Facebook page.
We expect that themes will emerge from the feedback. We’ll establish working groups later in the year for each of the major theme areas, and they’ll consider the relevant issues and opportunities. Each group will come up with a range of potential actions and projects to improve the wellbeing of our communities, each categorised under a social, cultural, economic and environmental framework. The work of the theme groups will be shared through this website, with updates on Council’s Facebook page and in local newspapers. There will be an opportunity for further community input once the theme groups have considered the feedback and prepared their response (possible actions and projects). This work will result in the development of the high-level Ōtorohanga 2050 plan.
Some of the potential actions and projects will best be considered by agencies and organisations other than the Council. It will be up to those organisations to decide whether they will take the projects forward. The actions and projects best considered by the Council will then feed into the development of the draft 2021-2031 Long Term Plan (LTP). The draft LTP, which covers a 10-year period, will signal the Council’s intended actions, projects and programmes, including any changes to services and service levels. It will highlight the key issues Council believes need addressing, as well as setting the platform for the future prosperity and wellbeing of the District. It was also include those actions/projects the Council wants to progress from the Ōtorohanga 2050 community engagement and feedback. The draft LTP is likely to be available for community review and feedback in March/April 2021.