Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

A former councillor recently said the current councillors have had a dream run, benefiting from the population boom and lower interest rates. So, are the councillors lucky?

People are flocking to Tauranga, not because the council is so amazing, but because Auckland is struggling to house people entering the country. This means more houses are being built in Tauranga, which is repaying council's debt faster than we budgeted for.

We are lucky in this respect. However, lucky people create their own luck through hard work and seizing opportunities. For instance, the city is now $10 million better off after the council sold some land to Zespri last year.

Within a year, we turned a lemon into lemonade by converting the empty, leaky, cosy club at Blake Park into the new high-tech, high performance sport facility.

We also committed to lingering projects, such as the Greerton library, the Marine Precinct, the CBD university, and building new roads in Papamoa. Some of these projects were promised 20 years ago.

We unluckily inherited legacy issues from previous councils, such as a mouldy office building, low staff morale, and major investments needed for our ICT and stormwater assets.

We are working our way through these issues. For instance, the previous council was heading towards a $350 million solution to fix the city's flood protection. We unanimously agreed to a new approach, which is roughly two-thirds cheaper.

Another former councillor says staff did not tell them about the state of council's ICT systems or the leaky office building. But councillors who know how to govern have better relationships with their staff than what he described.

We are lucky the cost of borrowing money has given us a chance to fix our internal issues. So we are seizing the opportunity to employ more staff and give them better systems to process more building consents, faster.

So yes, the ball has bounced in our favour since 2013. But I believe it's our ability to get things done that separates us from previous councils.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 0276989548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice