More than 2300 residents have had their say on the Christchurch City Council’s budget for the next 10 years, with consultation now closed on the Draft Long Term Plan 2021–31.
Considering Christchurch’s population is about 390,000, that total seems somewhat small bearing in mind social media is dominated by critics of the City Council.
It would not surprise me if a large proportion of submissions came from New Brighton as residents are not short of an opinion out this way.
Mayor Lianne Dalziel says: “Our Long Term Plan sets out what we plan to do over the next 10 years, and how we will fund that investment in infrastructure and service.”
“We consider all submissions we receive. Every submission is analysed and ultimately helps inform our final decisions on how we invest in our city, and navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.”
The next step in the process is for submitters to speak to their submissions in public hearings in May. The hearings will be live-streamed on the Council website.
The New Brighton Residents Association will be represented by Celeste Donovan making a third appearance on flying the flag on behalf of locals in the Council arena and it will be useful for others to be there on the day for support (when dates are confirmed).
Following the hearings, Councillors will consider all the feedback and debate possible changes before signing off on the Long Term Plan 2021–31 in June this year.
This phase will be very important, and our local Councillor (aka James Daniels) hopefully will be acutely aware of what New Brighton wants and the ‘when’ is now. I suspect there will be pressure on the draft Long Term Plan as different parts of the city and competing Councillors lobby to have bits put in, at the down-sizing expense of others.
The coastal ward is getting a fair chunk of the spend and there may be some push-back against that from elsewhere.
The sign-off of the LTP for New Brighton is not the end once the plan is in place, it is just the beginning, and all of east-side should take an interest in progress.
Remember the LTP only alluded to the amount of money to be spent in areas and projects, but very little on ‘detail’.
This ‘detail’ and ‘time-frames’ around the ‘detail’ will be the real indicators of what is happening once the ball starts rolling.