There’s a common view that councils should just be about roads, rubbish and water and everything else is a nice to have.
And while infrastructure is critical, for us to attract people and keep them in our district we also need to make it a great place to live with things for people to do.
This is where our community facilities come in.
Ensuring we have great swimming pools, having a space to show our local art collection, bring in plays and concerts from outside the district, or being able to preserve and display the taonga that tell the story of the district are all part of this.
That’s not to mention all the sports fields, skate parks, playgrounds, halls, theatres and walking tracks that give energy and life to the district.
This pie chart has remained reasonably consistent for many years, but we want to hear from you if you think we’ve got this balance right or, if not, how you think we should split our spending.
In this section we’re not talking about increasing or decreasing overall funding, just how we split up the pie. So, if you increase spending in one area, it means decreasing spending in another.
An increase in community spending would mean older pipes and rougher roads, or pushing up infrastructure spend could come at the cost of less park development, or older playground equipment.
