Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Dear next Mayor of Tauranga.Congratulations, you're the Mayor of New Zealand's fifth largest city. The city's growth will create many opportunities for the region, and will no doubt cause you to grow many grey hairs.

Tauranga needs to fund $4 billion of infrastructure during the next 30 years to accommodate our new residents. Expect 72 per cent of the new residents – to 2033 at least – to be older than 65 years of age.

The city cannot sustain itself without a young and productive workforce to fund the infrastructure and provide for the region's ageing population.

Tauranga's success in managing our growth is fully dependent on the relationship you build with the next new Mayor of Western Bay of Plenty District Council. Other relationships are important, but please make this your top priority.

‘Other cities have it, so we should have it too' is the worst rationale to justify building amenities. Following the Jones' will always keep Tauranga in the shadows. We can have nice things, but dare to be different and build on Tauranga's competitive advantages instead.

This generation is the first to feel the impacts of climate change, perhaps we are the last ones to be able to do anything about it? Sydney and Dunedin are recent examples of what is likely to happen in Tauranga if you do nothing.

Many houses and key infrastructure will be affected by rising sea-levels and groundwater tables. The longer the city does nothing, the fewer solutions we'll have available.

Finally, you inherit an organisation that's worked hard during the last three years to climb out of a hole. Productivity was limited during a turbulent six years with four CEOs and failings to empower staff with the right tools to do their jobs cost-effectively.

Strong strategic direction is required from you and the councillors to ensure all the cogs in the machine are working in harmony. We don't need cheerleaders. We also don't need a cookie-cutter strategic vision copied from somewhere else.

We need strong direction that's ingrained throughout all of council's functions. It's a challenging task as council is a collection of 25 different functions forced to meet central government's varied legislative requirements. These requirements are constantly changing and often contradict each other.

I wish you all the very best. The city needs you!

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.