Water system upgrade, multi-sport hub top survey
New Plymouth residents think upgrading the city’s water system should be the district council’s top priority – as long as this doesn’t involve putting in water meters, survey results show.
The findings of New Plymouth District Council’s (NPDC) Top Ten Ko¯rero, a poll that was carried out over 11 weeks, have been released.
About 9400 people responded to the survey – 2273 from a random and demographically representative sample and 7130 members of the public.
The proposed multi-sport hub at the site of the New Plymouth Raceway got the most feedback on any single issue, with around 1500 responses, coming in ahead of the water network upgrades, which garnered 888 responses.
The results also showed that, overall, people were unwilling to pay medium or large rates increases, but 78 per cent of the general public group said they were willing to have some sort of increase to establish the multisport hub.
Water upgrades ranked number one in terms of what participants thought council’s priorities should be, with water meters coming in last at 10.
And though NPDC gave Port Taranaki $50,000 to lead a study into the feasibility of a marina being developed in the harbour near the lee breakwater, the idea didn’t gain much traction with respondents, because they relegated the idea to number eight.
The aim of the survey was to hear people’s views on issues such as water, zero waste, tracks and trails, Covid-19 response, thriving towns and cities and climate.
The council could not do it all and had to balance needs and wants with the collective ability to fund the future through rates, Mayor Neil Holdom said in an emailed statement.
‘‘We’re looking to reduce our overheads where possible, pitching projects to central government for funding while at the same time realising there has been years of underinvestment in core services like our water and wastewater networks. We’ve got some big decisions to make.’’
Over the next two months the council will put together a draft long-term 10-year plan (LTP), which will look at how $2 billion in public funds should be spent and which big work programmes should be in or left out.
‘‘Then we’ll run a formal consultation programme to again seek everyone’s views on where we are going as a community before developing the final plan in June 2021.’’
Sport Taranaki chief executive Michael Carr said the results reflected strong public support for the proposed multi-sport hub.
‘‘I think, from what we can see, the rankings are about double of any other topic and that speaks volumes really. And nearly 80 per cent said they were willing to have a small rates rise to fund the multisport hub.’’