The Gore District Council has received a record number of submissions to its 10 Year Plan with 232 individuals and organisations having their say.
Submissions closed last Friday to Are We Ready? the Council’s 10-Year-Plan Consultation Document. Councillors will this Thursday hold an extraordinary meeting to hearing the 36 submitters who want to speak in support of their submission.
Gore District Mayor Tracy Hicks said it was really encouraging and heartening to see the buy in from the community to the challenges before the Council.
“It’s not just the high number of submissions but also the quality of submissions.”
Communications/Marketing Manager Sonia Gerken said there has been a steady rise in the number of people taking time to engage with the Council at 10-Year-Plan time.
“Since 2012 the number of submissions has more than doubled.”
- 2018 – 28 10-Year-Plan Consultation Document: 232 submissions
- 2015 – 25 10-Year-Plan Consultation Document: 214 submissions
- 2012 – 22 Long Term Plan: 101 submissions
Prior to 2012 councils produced Long Term Council Community Plans. The GDC’s submission numbers for those were:
- 2009 – 19 Long Term Council Community Plan: 53 submissions
- 2006 – 16 Long Term Council Community Plan: 46 submissions
She believed engagement techniques and interest in the issues were the main reasons for the increase in submissions in recent years.
“Enabling people to submit online has encouraged more residents to become involved, as opposed to the generic, formal submissions from stakeholders or lobby groups.
“This year we had 126 people submit via our online form.”
An analysis of responses to the three main issues shows the Council’s preferred option for each was supported by the majority of submitters.
They were:
Rating boundary review
90 submissions were in favour of introducing a consistent approach to defining urban rating boundaries across the district (the Council’s preferred option); 57 were against it.
Dog parks
85 submissions were in favour of dog parks in Gore and Mataura (the Council’s preferred option); 30 submissions were in favour of a dog park in Gore or Mataura; 54 submissions were against dog parks.
Pyramid Bridge
106 submissions were in favour of replacing the bridge with a widened single lane bridge (the Council’s preferred option); 55 submissions were in favour of a two lane bridge.
The extraordinary meeting to hear submissions starts at 9.30am this Thursday (17 May) in the Council chambers.