Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Great opportunities carry great responsibilities. As a Councillor, my greatest fear is whether projects that I support, fail. Worst still is when these failures turn into white elephants and create irreversible burdens that future residents are stuck with.

Sometimes projects fail because of reasons beyond Tauranga's control, such as global financial downturns. Projects can also fail because of silly cost-cutting during the planning or execution stages.

I believe a failure of previous councils was that they spread funding very thinly across too many areas, causing a number of projects to be left hanging in no-mans-land.

For example, successive councils dragged out the marine precinct and Greerton library projects for 10 and 20 years respectively. Last year, the newly elected Council resourced staff to develop honest business cases so we could finally decide whether to fund them or stop them all together. Both projects have now started and are tracking well.

I want to set Tauranga's projects up to win. This means I have to focus resources into a narrower scope of projects by saying NO to funding some worthy projects. By properly resourcing projects from the beginning, we can lower their chance of failing due to poor planning or poor execution.

Imagine if Council reallocated the $100,000 each year from the tropical display house and invested it in The Elms – it could create a grander place of tranquillity in the central city. Imagine if NZ's second oldest European heritage site was set up to be an amazing chic venue for weddings. It could empower The Elms with income to help maintain this truly unique heritage asset for Tauranga.

The initial capital cost of projects is not the biggest hurdle - external funding is available if you know where to look. The difficult part of projects is ensuring a sustainable operating model so they don't approach the council in future years seeking an unexpected rescue. Two recent examples include Invercargill and Dunedin City Councils being approached to financially rescue their city's rugby stadiums.

I will continue to support worthy projects that are set up to win. If I don't support funding some services during deliberations on the long term plan, it is because I want resources to focus on ensuring the success of other projects.

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.