Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Our last budget before the elections was debated this week. I'll outline the decisions next week.

The wide range of submissions from different parts of the city gave us a thumbs up in general, although there's still a lot of work to do. But the range of support, from developers to lobby groups, was refreshing.

In our draft budget, we proposed a rates rise within 2.5% for residential properties. Hopefully we'll stick within it.

Our debt is $60 million less than the last election, mainly thanks to the sale of Route K. Even if you ignore the Route K sale, our overall net debt per property has reduced over the past three years despite building a lot of infrastructure to accommodate our new residents.

Council is building a lot more roads and water infrastructure, particularly to aid the growth in Papamoa and The Lakes.

To help ease the impact of school traffic, I'm committed to completing the urban cycle network within two years so more students can cycle to school.

The stormwater projects march on as we've purchased houses to make way for safe flow paths for floodwaters, focusing on Matua initially.

For the first time, Tauranga's entire transport network will be planned together. This means the local roads, state highways, and public transport will be modelled together as we work with the NZ transport agency and the regional council to plan for future.

Despite a record-breaking number of consents lodged, we process 99% of consents within the 20-day timeframe.

We've had to ramp up the number of consent officers and inspectors. It's been really tough as we compete against Christchurch, Auckland, Queenstown and Hamilton councils who desperately need them too.

This week should be interesting!

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.

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