Moving forward with big issues

We will deal with climate change among other issues

Iused to play a bit of rugby in my younger days to a reasonably high level so, like many others around New Zealand, I am the best armchair coach and referee in the country. When you are on the outside looking in, it is very easy to make judgments about coaches and players and, if they don’t meet your expectations, it is even easier to say they need to go.

So to see the All Blacks in this weekend’s Rugby World Cup final after a period of ups and downs over the last year or so is a great credit to all those involved. Many of us probably didn’t think we would be in the position we are in currently.

In periods of adversity, it is how you react and move forward that often determines how events will be remembered. There are always learnings to be made and, whether that means changing tactics or introducing new people, the ability to stay on course and remain positive is absolutely crucial.

We have seen several districts this year face some extreme adversity with severe weather events affecting their land and people. The impacts will remain for many years ahead as they grapple with the needs of their communities in trying to repair and restore services, at the same time as trying to do business as usual.

We are extremely fortunate here in Horowhenua that we have not been impacted this year. I don’t want to get into the whole climate change debate but the reality is that the weather plays a huge part in our lives — too little or too much rain can have an enormous impact on how we manage and maintain delivery of our core services.

The likelihood, though, is that at some stage we will have to deal with severe weather events — it is probably when, not if. It does highlight the need to ensure we are aware of our risks and plan accordingly. As we head into another LongTerm Plan process, there are some big crunchy questions that we need to ask ourselves.

Do we ensure that, operationally, we have the capacity and resources to mitigate and minimise that risk and, as a governance table, what is the level of risk we are prepared to take? Does it mean we increase or decrease the level of insurance we have, or what amount of ratepayers’ money do we spend to try and prepare for these events?

Are we investing enough in our infrastructure to ensure that it remains resilient and robust and are we forecasting our growth assumptions in a manner that provides us some confidence that the decisions we make today will be fit for the future?

There is often no right or wrong answer to these questions but it is essential that we have the conversations so that we understand the investment required to manage the level of risk we are comfortable with and try to balance that with managing the expectations from within the community.

Preparing a Long-Term Plan is always the most critical piece of work that a council undertakes during a term and it is hugely important that the views and opinions of our residents go into that process. I encourage you to start thinking about the direction you would like us to take and the level of risk you are comfortable with. We look forward to hearing from you.