Catherine Stewart Tauranga City Councillor

Tauranga City Council's elected members have been discussing the Annual Plan.

We recently received a request from Tauranga Hockey Centre at Blake Park for $600,000 for additional hockey facilities.

The Airport Master Plan was also discussed by elected members. Continued growth at our airport will require more space for planes as well as capacity to handle more passengers and related infrastructure.

Air New Zealand plans to introduce ATR aircrafts, which seat up to 68 passengers. Kiwi Air is offering flights from Tauranga to Nelson and Dunedin from February 15. And Tauranga is still on Jet Star's radar.

Work is in hand to create a framework that will assist elected members with the decision-making process when it comes to requests for funding during the Annual Plan and Long Term Plan. While it is a challenge to make any funding 100 per cent fair and equitable among sporting codes, a guideline would definitely assist.

The traffic congestion after the recent Jet Sprints event at Baypark is a reminder of how clogged our roads could become in an emergency evacuation. I'm catching up with Civil Defence to find out what changes have been put in place for our region since central government adopted the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan last June.

And despite more people coming to Tauranga and paying rates we are still looking at a rates increase of about 2.5 per cent. The principle 'growth pays for growth” is one that needs reviewing.