Palmerston North city councillor Brent Barrett.
THREE KEY FACTS:
- Brent Barrett is an elected member of Palmerston North City Council
OPINION
In a year’s time, a new council will be elected to help shape the city’s future. Will you be involved?
It’s worth considering I think. We all have an interest in the city’s future. That’s true whether we’re recently arrived or were born here. Whether we rent or we own property. Whether we’re young or old.
Voting matters. In recent council elections, four or five new members were elected. I consider that to be a healthy turnover.
Yet relative to diversity in the community, our council is still much more likely to own property and to also be older, more European and more male than the communities we serve.
Standing matters. Serving on council isn’t for the faint of heart. To be effective, I think you need to know your stuff and know your values. You need to be able to listen, have robust debates, and help make hard decisions.
Entering my ninth year as a city councillor, I’m glad to be pursuing this path. It’s an incredibly rewarding way to participate and contribute.
Making the best of today and shaping our future isn’t all about the elected council. Voters and advocates play a vital role. Council workers and contractors, the private sector, and the wider community in their goodwill and voluntary efforts are all vitally important.
Looking ahead, there’s plenty of opportunities to ensure our city prospers, to ensure we all benefit from that prosperity, and to protect and enjoy nature.
There are also big challenges. Public trust in council is stubbornly low, around 40%. Growth is increasingly costly. The climate crisis is here. Legacy infrastructure needs renewal. Our rivers aren’t healthy. Local roads aren’t coping with heavy traffic.
And the list goes on.
The current council has made some big decisions. Supporting Māori Wards. Voting a 10 Year Plan to invest over $2.5 billion of public money into the city’s future. Starting to include capital value in setting rates on each property, a decision that ensures most residents and most businesses are better off.
We hear a lot about council rates and council debt, and rightly so. They’re the bulk of the public money we invest. All taxes and debt tend to be unpopular, despite funding things that are essential and popular. It’s an irony we live with.
For context, rates are less than half a per cent of property value in the city. Council debt is less than 1% of property value, and will remain well below 2% while our public assets grow from $2 billion to nearly $4 billion over the next 10 years.
Through investment of public money and a huge amount of goodwill and energy in the community, council projects and services contribute strongly to the environmental, social, cultural and economic wellbeing in our city.
How we shape that is up to all of us. The future is truly ours to create. With a year to go until the city’s next council is elected, the question is what part will you play?
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