John Cronin BOP Regional Council Chairman www.boprc.govt.nz

Enthusiastic volunteers had a great day out on the Mount beach last weekend as we celebrated Coast Care's planting of the one millionth dune plant along our Bay of Plenty coast.

This fun event marked the significant efforts put in by volunteers throughout our region during the last 19 years. So many people roll up their sleeves and get stuck into the vital work that is needed, not just on our coast but to help improve water quality in our rivers, streams and lakes.

Coast Care is a community partnership programme with other councils where volunteers work tirelessly together to re-establish plants on their beaches and dunes to ensure they remain stable. Grazing stock, excavation for development, weeds, and people using their vehicles, have all contributed to reducing the number of native dune plants, which leads to erosion.

There are 25 Coast Care community volunteer groups throughout the Bay of Plenty, with about 3500 people involved. If you'd like to get involved, just call the regional council on 0800 884 880.

Our Annual Plan was adopted this week, and I'm pleased to say that getting more efficient, and sharpening our pencil, has helped reduce our general rates increase.

We are always looking for new ways to save money, and we've set ourselves an efficiency and savings target of $500,000 for 2013/14.

Our priorities for the year include Tauranga Harbour catchment, the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes programme, a water management programme, river scheme sustainability, doing business better, and of course the local government elections in October.