Make your voice heard: feedback open on Local Area and District-Wide Blueprint until 17 July

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Now’s the time to make sure Waikato District Council hears your voice and what’s most important to your community.

Feedback is open until 17 July as part of the latest round of Blueprint consultation.

The Blueprint captures your aspirations for your community’s future and after COVID-19 turned our world upside down, we need to know if your community’s priorities have changed since the Blueprint was adopted a year ago.

What’s the Blueprint? It’s a snapshot of what you told us were your dreams, ambitions and goals for your own community. If you support something your community identified as important in the first round, let us know. If you’d like to be involved in making it happen in your community, let us know that too! It might go in the Long Term Plan (LTP), it might be something your community can work with us, or work on; now’s your opportunity to tell us.

We’re gearing up to prepare our next LTP, which secures the budget for work and projects completed by Council for the next 10 years. The Blueprint will play an important part of what gets into the LTP and what doesn’t.

Waikato District Council Deputy Mayor Aksel Bech says visiting each community featured in the Blueprint always highlights how passionate people are about where they live.

“Visiting you in your community really brings it home that we live in a fantastic place. We have so many great people here that are always willing to come out and tell us what matters most to them. As we get ready to prepare our next Long Term Plan for 2021-31, it’s really important that we know what means the most to you. I urge you all to have a look at the documents and make your voice heard. The Blueprint is one of our most trusted documents because it is your voice – this is your opportunity to tell us what you want.

“Perhaps walking and cycling tracks are more important than ever or maybe a community project that highlights a town’s identity should happen straight away, rather than be further down the priority list.

“Basically, we want you to confirm, or suggest a change on each initiative’s priority ranking. Is it still your top priority, or is something else more important? We also want to hear who you think should be leading each of the initiatives. We’ve made a suggestion, but have we got it right?” Deputy Mayor Bech says.

District-wide initiatives have also been created that impact the district as a whole. These also have priority rankings and suggestions on who should lead each initiative.

Feedback for both the Local Area and District-Wide Blueprint is open until 5pm Friday 17 July and can be made here.

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