Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

While Monday's council meeting didn't last all day, there sure were a lot of topics on the agenda for debate.

Our first decision was unanimously agreed by all elected members present, to not set up a special ward for those on the Maori electoral roll.

We all had our different reasons. I don't think the issue is going away, particularly if there are future discussions on amalgamating councils.

I think previous councils have provided a slow but steady journey to improve relationships with local iwi.

The next big topic we debated was our expectations of Bay Venues Ltd, our Council Controlled Organisation.

It's an external entity, but it's 100 per cent owned by Tauranga City Council.

BVL was created when the previous council merged two CCOs into one in 2012-2013. These entities ran our ‘dry' venues, for example Baypark and ASB Arena and our ‘wet' venues, like swimming pools.

A few new councillors believed the decisions we made on Monday should have been considered by the previous council before they hit the ‘go' button on amalgamating the two CCOs together.

Anyway, we made a range of decisions on BVL to set them up to win, as they're currently set up to fail.

Our decisions are not finalised, as we'll include them in our draft Long Term Plan 2015-2025 for public consultation in April 2015.

We also considered the public feedback on the proposal to establish a special housing area at 162 Waihi Rd.

With some adjustments, particularly for traffic, we agreed the proposal should go to consent for consideration once the Minister of Housing gives his approval.

We also agreed to leave former councillor Clayton Mitchell's positions on our committees vacant until after the Mount-Papamoa ward by-election in February 2015.

We agreed to leave the matter of our support of Marine Reach – a not-for-profit organisation providing humanitarian and medical relief services on a ship around the Pacific Islands – on the table until we get further information on the demand for berthage on our wharfs.

I encourage you to check out the City Delivery agenda for yesterday's meeting on the council's website.

It contains a good wrap of how our activities are performing, as well as an easy to read summary of council's financial position as at September 30, 2015.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 027 6989 548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.