Message from the Mayor & Elected members

E ngā iwi puta noa i tō tatau rohe o Rotorua

Tēnā tatau

Do you have the confidence in Rotorua to invest in the future of our district and our people?

Will you help to “colour” the future – for you, for your tamariki and mokopuna, for the progress of this wonderful district we all call home?

These are the questions we now ask you, as we work towards the development of the 2018-28 Long-term Plan (LTP).

Twenty five years ago the likes of our Aquatic Centre, Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre, lakefront and inner city were excellent, modern amenities that met our needs.

That’s not the case today and as a community we need to decide what standard of facilities to provide for current and future generations. How important is it that future generations share the same quality of community assets we enjoyed?

Several years ago Rotorua was at a standstill and predicted to decline. Local businesses and community groups told us this was not an acceptable future for our district. They wanted to see change, progress and a better future.

We established the Rotorua 2030 vision, a bold aspirational plan for our district which we refreshed last year to establish The Rotorua Way, the next chapter in our long-term journey. This set our direction, providing the shape of the future we want for our district, and the spatial plan (still in progress) will further outline that. This 2018-28 Long-term Plan will weave it all together and add the “colour”, setting out how Council will prioritise and resource our development as a community.

Positive change has been evident during the past few years. Our inner city has been revitalised; we have new businesses in Rotorua while existing ones have reinvested and expanded; neighbourhoods are being improved; our local economy has performed well with GDP growth consistently above the national average for the past year; and our increasing population has bucked previous predictions with Rotorua now a medium growth area. Those are just some of the positives we’ve seen and we now need to consider the next 10 years.

We have some questions for you. Do we move forward with confidence and invest further in our district’s future, in our mokopuna? Or are we managing a district in decline and should we therefore not be reinvesting in facilities, assets and projects aimed at ensuring our district continues to progress?

We are proposing priorities that link the strengths identified in The Rotorua Way to projects and programmes that will bring about further change and, we believe, take Rotorua into the future. These proposals are now before you:

• Reviving our facilities
• Environmental sustainability
• Growing our district
• Keeping the foot on the pedal of progress
• Funding and delivery

We have considered the proposals in this document carefully, to ensure that we are acting in the best interests of our community. We have asked ourselves if we are fulfilling our roles as the guardians of our district, in balancing the need to look after what we have now with catering for progress, while at the same time establishing a prudent financial framework to deliver what is planned.

We are resetting our financial direction. In 2015 we had a plan based on austerity. Today positive growth is driving us towards fulfilling Vision 2030 and keeping the foot on the pedal of progress.

Help us “colour” the future – for you, for your tamariki, for our mokopuna, for the progress of this wonderful district we all call home.

Tatau tatau – we together

Steve Chadwick

Mayor