Whakatāne District Council has received about 1000 submissions to its draft Long-term Plan for 2024-2034.

More than 70 people have indicated that they wish to speak at the hearing, which starts tomorrow, and is likely to continue until the next day.

Submissions closed on Friday on the draft plan, which, in its current form, will see an average 17.1 percent increase in rates across the district and include a master plan for te Rex Morpeth Recreation Hub expected to cost $105.7 million over the next 10-plus years.

The council wasn’t able to give exact figures on the number of submissions it had received when the Beacon went to print due to quality assurance processes still being in progress, it said the number was “approximately 1000”.

This follows a month-long consultation process that included about 25 engagement events throughout the district.

Though it is twice as many submissions as was received in the last Long-term Plan, in 2021, it does not break the council’s record of 1160 submissions received for the 2009-19 Long Term Council Community Plan when one of the key proposals was to sell council-owned pensioner housing.

Because of the large number of submitters wishing to be heard, arrangements have been made for the hearings to continue into the evening if necessary.

Mayor Victor Luca said he intended to give each speaker five minutes to make their points, after which there would be a chance for councillors to ask questions of clarification.

You’ve got five minutes to change hearts and minds,” he said. “That’s the objective of submitting.”

He advised submitters to look at the points they wanted to hit on during that five minutes. You want to be punchy; you want to hit all of your points.

Whakatāne Mayor Victor Luca will chair the hearing committee.

“I think they should bear in mind that councillor’s minds can be changed. That’s why we’ve gone through all this process of consulting.”

However, all submissions would be read and taken into account whether or not the submitters spoke at the hearing.

“I guess submitting in person can be quite powerful, rather than just being a sterile piece of paper, but councillors will be reading everything. I’ve read some of them already today.

Some are quite short, but then you never know. Some people will just fill in the questionnaire and not really put anything in the comments and then come to the hearing and that’s their chance to elaborate.”

After taking the submissions into consideration, councillors will deliberate on the plan at a public meeting on May 8.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.