Whangārei mayoral candidates, Sheryl Mai, Alex Wright and Tony Savage.
■ More than 100,000 voting packs for this year's Northland Regional Council, Whangārei, Far North and Kaipara district councils, community board and Northland District Health Board elections have been sent out for the election.
If you are not enrolled or have not receive your voting papers, you will need to check or update your details and enrol to vote, then contact the electoral officer to arrange a special vote.
To enrol to vote, freetext your name and address to 3676, phone 0800 36 76 56 or pick up an enrolment form from your local council or New Zealand Post Shop. You can also visit the vote.nz website and enrol to vote online.
Votes must be posted back by Tuesday October 8 to ensure they are received before the elections close at noon on Saturday October 12.
More information at www.localelections.co.nz, Election Services at info@electionservices.co.nz or 0800 922-822.
As part of its 2019 local body election coverage Whangārei's mayoral candidates, Sheryl Mai, Alex Wright and Tony Savage have answered a series of questions posed by the Northern Advocate.
We gave them 200 words to answer each question.
Today we asked ''What is the biggest issue facing the district and what will you do to solve it?''
Tomorrow they will answer the question: ''How would you support community housing providers to work effectively, alongside others, to improve housing in the district?''
SHERYL MAI:
Climate change is the biggest issue facing our district and council. We have 270km of coastline and many of our vital infrastructure assets are under threat. We have plans to identify and budget for protecting vulnerable assets, and this will be expensive.
We must ensure climate change mitigation and adaptation are front and centre for council activities and our community to deal with; sea-level rise, changing rainfall patterns, increased magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events, flooding, drought, wind damage, landslides, coastal inundation, storm surge and coastal erosion.
Priorities include measuring emissions and setting reduction targets, aiming for zero emissions and a carbon-neutral council by 2050. We must lead by example and educate our community - although many in our community already have valuable knowledge we can use! We are committed to energy tracking and management methods to reduce energy use, and external certification of our carbon footprint.
Our District Plan and District Growth Strategy already take in to account the impact of climate change and we declared a Climate Change Emergency in July. The other major threat is a weakened democracy, we need people involved and passionate for their future – have YOU voted?
TONY SAVAGE:
On every measure that matters, Whangārei is well behind the rest of the country. Improving the lives of the people that live here is the biggest issue facing our district.
What is clear is that voting for the status quo will produce the same result. We can do better, but that requires new leadership that can bring our diverse community interests together into a shared vision.
This will mean partnering with the business sector, iwi, other local governments, Crown agencies and central government to develop new initiatives to bring more opportunity and jobs to Whangārei. It also means being sensitive to the wide range of community interests and protecting what we most love about living here.
The Whangārei District Council has a significant impact on our local economy. Rates have increased faster than the inflation rate which reduces the money people have to spend. Too much of council's spending goes outside of our district, and jobs are being lost because businesses are finding dealing with the council too difficult.
These things need to change if we are to prosper.
ALEX WRIGHT:
The biggest issue facing the Whangārei District is that our population is increasing faster than anywhere else in the country and we are not adequately prepared with infrastructure and housing.
To solve it I will ask for forward-thinking by all concerned agencies as to the scale and detail of what we need.
First I will make sure that all planning for infrastructure that is presently needed is attended to promptly. Obviously roading must be adequate for the present before we plan for the future.
Then I will make contingency plans for what infrastructure our projected new housing might need and I will have such plans ready for whatever occurs for example when we see where housing will most likely take place.
Funding will always be a problem. I will make sure we always work in tandem with Central Government and try my hardest to get what funding is available.