6 August 2018
Busy year for Council facilities

Masterton residents have been making the most of Council facilities with library, recreation and aerodrome usage figures at high levels during the 2017-18 financial year.

In the year to the end of June more than 170,000 people visited the Masterton library. Meanwhile, usage of online e-books and e-magazines increased almost 50 per cent; from 8,272 in 2016-17 to 12,214 in 2017-18.

All library members have access to the SMART catalogue, which enables people to borrow resources from 23 participating libraries (across Hutt City, Porirua, Kapiti, Weltec and Whitireia).

During the year Masterton borrowers placed reservations on 29,492 resources through the SMART libraries catalogue, up 30 per cent on the previous financial year.

Recreation facilities have also seen significant activity. There were more than 67,000 casual swims at the Trust House Recreation Centre.

The number of children learning to swim through school programmes in the 2017-18 year was more than three times that in the previous year; 6,940 children were enrolled in school learn to swim programmes compared to 2,001 for the previous year.

Masterton District Council has also started measuring usage of its 10 kilometres of recreation trails. Since monitoring started at the end of April there have been almost 65,000 ‘movements’ on the trails.

Trails throughout Lansdowne and Henley Lake have been the most popular with an average of 186 and 742 daily movements respectively.

Masterton’s Hood Aerodrome has also had significant usage. While adverse winter weather is impacting activity at the aerodrome, there was an average of 25 landings every day in June.

A total of 4,665 landings were recorded in the first half of 2018.

Manager of Community Facilities and Activities, Andrea Jackson, said it was great to see the strong usage figures.

“We work hard to provide facilities that our community is proud of and wants to use. These strong usage figures are a clear demonstration that our facilities are valuable.

“To see significant increases in some areas also indicates that we are perhaps improving parts of our facilities and the services we offer at those facilities,” Ms Jackson said.

“We want to always be improving our offering and are keen to hear any feedback from community members at any time.”

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