Rotorua wins most beautiful city title

Rotorua is once again New Zealand's most beautiful city.
The crown was handed to the city at the Keep New Zealand Beautiful Awards last night, held at Rotorua's Sudima Hotel. It is the fifth time in 10 years Rotorua has won the title. Rotorua won the most beautiful city prize in 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2006. Last year it was runner-up to Dunedin.
One of the judges, Mary Brown, said driving into Rotorua yesterday it was clear why it deserved to win.
"We drove in from Auckland, it was blooming with tulips," Ms Brown said.
"Even though it was teeming down with rain you still look around the township and it's beautiful.
"It's a gem."
She said Keep Rotorua Beautiful had worked hard and had a solid group of dedicated volunteers.
Keep Rotorua Beautiful deserved the recognition as Rotorua truly was the most beautiful city, she said.
"Rotorua is a city that's made a fantastic name and image for itself in that Keep Rotorua Beautiful has maintained and enhanced that image but has largely gone unrecognised for a long time.
"Keep Rotorua Beautiful has poured as much energy as a boiling mud pool into focussing on its activity base around litter reduction and education, conservation awareness and initiatives, graffiti eradication and prevention programmes as well as maintaining a truly beautiful city."
Rotorua was up against cities of more than 20,000 people, including Gisborne, Napier, Hamilton and Christchurch.
The small towns award was won by Otorohanga and the large towns winner was Kaiapoi. Tokoroa was highly commended as runner-up for its efforts in the past year with "fantastic work around litter and graffiti reduction as well as fostering community pride".
Keep New Zealand Beautiful is holding its annual conference in Rotorua this weekend and the award judges are due to go on a tour of the city.
* Our View - A6