Community asked to share an idea for the future

The Central Otago District Council (CODC) is calling for the community to brainstorm long-term ideas.

In about 12 months’ time the council will be going out for consultation on its Long-term Plan 2024-2034, but right now work is beginning to ramp up to develop that plan.

The Long-term Brainstorm is running in parallel with the council’s Annual Plan consultation. Central Otago Mayor Tim Cadogan is encouraging the community to take an interest in both opportunities to engage.

“While it’s not the usual way we do things there are definite advantages to running our annual plan and long-term plan community engagements alongside each other. By starting these long-term conversations with our community now we can ensure the community voice feeds into our planning process early on. We’d love to hear what people want us to be thinking about for their town, district or community of interest for the next 10 years and beyond.

“We know times are tough right now. That’s putting the squeeze on a lot of grand plans. There are calls for us to ‘stick to our knitting’ and focus on core services. Conscious of that, we still believe this is an opportunity for our community to tell us what they’d like to see in the mix of things we consider putting into that 10-year plan. It could well be a little idea that would have a big impact. It may not even be something that necessarily needs financial support but council’s backing in a non-monetary sense.”

Ideas will be collected both online via a virtual post-it note ideas board here and via suggestion boxes at CODC libraries and service centres until May 1.