Ten-year plan maps path towards a more sustainable greater Wellington region

Anyone interested in the future sustainability of the Wellington region – and how their regional rates are spent – is urged to read the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s proposed ten-year plan.

A summary of the ten-year plan is being distributed to every household in the region and sent to community groups. The full plan is available on Greater Wellington’s website at http:// http://www.gw.govt.nz or by contacting the Council.

“In this plan the Greater Wellington Regional Council has adopted a vision of working towards a sustainable region. We’ve identified the ten areas where we feel we can best contribute and called these the take 10 quality for life elements of biodiversity, water, air, energy, land, transport, waste, recreation &parks, safety &hazards and community. All our work programmes contribute to these elements and we’ve set targets for what we want to achieve by 2013,” says Greater Wellington Chairperson Margaret Shields.

“In the spirit of the new Local Government Act, we’ve put a lot of effort into making our ten-year plan easy-to-read and distributing it widely. I encourage people to read it and to tell us what they think of our plans. This is the three-yearly opportunity to have a say on the Council’s strategic direction”.

The proposed overall regional rate increase for 2003/04 is 3.6%. Allowing for an unchanged water supply levy paid by the four metropolitan city councils, the overall increased charge on the community is only 2.5%. Individual rate assessments will vary according to differences in works planned in the various cities and districts and property valuations.

The proposed ten-year plan is open for consultation until 19 May 2003. Submission hearings will be held in early June to allow the final document to be adopted by the Council before the end of June.

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