This month I want to put a real focus on investment in infrastructure for our community.
The city of Tauranga has experienced phenomenal growth over the past few years which has brought with it both tremendous opportunities to grab – and huge challenges to collectively overcome.
Areas of our region from Papamoa right through to Omokoroa are bursting at the
seams as we experience population growth that easily outstrips all projections. This has put
an increasingly noticeable strain on our roads, our schools, our medical facilities and on
house prices.
As your local MP I am concerned that service delivery is not keeping pace with population
growth and the Government’s bungled Census isn’t giving me great confidence that the issue will be rectified any time soon. It is simply not good enough that one-in-seven, or about 700,000 people, didn’t fully complete the Census.
This has devastating flow-on impacts for regional government funding allocation – in health services and education allocation – which are regionally stratified.
We don’t know what our population is, how many older people we have, or how many
younger people we have. This has real impacts on the Government’s ability to plan for
building schools, roads, or aged care facilities. Instead of making informed investments they are making assumptions and guesses. How can you make an informed decision about where to build a new school, or how many hip operations to fund, if you don’t have reliable data?
Our community has been fantastic keeping the pressure on the Government with petitions for roads, schools and medical facilities. As your local MP it’s been a real privilege to help
facilitate this and to guide constituents through the bureaucracy of government. We are
sending a clear message from the grassroots that we expect investment to keep pace with
growth.
We need to keep our voice strong because the growth in New Zealand is largely occurring in our community. Development must go hand in hand with services and infrastructure or we are putting our quality of life and community experience in jeopardy.
The Bay is a special place to live and we need to ensure it stays that way.
I look forward to connecting with you out in the community sometime soon.
Todd Muller
MP for Bay of Plenty
