Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council has started working on its next Ten Year Plan. This plan must be updated every three years and will be consulted on with the community in April next year before it is signed off in June 2012. The extended timeframes will give you some idea of how much work is involved.

Key to the Ten Year Plan is the identification of a set of outcomes which the council will seek to achieve on the behalf of its community in order to contribute to the well-being of its region. Before the amendment to the Local Government Act last year, these were called Community Outcomes and all sorts of organisations contributed to the achievement of the outcomes. Now they are clearly Council Outcomes and they focus on what the council will be doing to contribute to the economic, environmental, social and cultural wellbeing of the community.

The regional council held a workshop with key stakeholders last month to help form our new Council Outcomes. There is a lot of water yet to flow under the bridge with these, but there was quite a bit of agreement on what these should be – and some were quite different than what has come before. In summary they were:

• Environmental – People believed that the regional council should take a region-wide leadership role to identify economic development priorities, to enable regional infrastructure and produce economic growth.
• Environmental – It is important for council to lead the overall environmental strategy for the region to: set environmental priorities of the region; establish a national first low-carbon economic approach for the region; utilise research and development and key trends to enhance environmental outcomes; protect the region's land air and water; and to ensure the community is resilient and prepared for climate change.
• Social/Cultural – People believed that council should put more effort into strategic thinking and understanding its role in this area. In particular, communicating with the regional community and developing environmental awareness and local action are important.

There were a lot more messages and a lot more work to be done on these Council Outcomes, but what was very clear was what people want the Bay of Plenty to be like in 30 years. They wanted a caring, healthy community; living in a beautiful and protected environment characterised by sustainable use of our resources; while having an inclusive and prosperous economy to pay for all our aspirations. I would be happy with that!

If you have any views on this or any other issue, please contact me on [email protected] or ring me on 07 579-5150. Or you can check out my website at www.janenees.co.nz