Councillor's Comment: Tim Skinner

I am halfway through my fourth term and still feel very blessed, as I did on first day as a Councillor 11 years ago, to be at the Council table representing our community.

In many ways I feel it has come full circle as we deliberate on the financially challenging Long Term Plan this week. This is the reason I originally stood for Council – passionate concern for the financial challenges many hard-working Nelson families, young and old, face in keeping a warm roof over their heads.

This LTP, titled ‘Beyond the Storm’, for me is also a metaphor for the economic storm we are in – a struggle many individuals and businesses find themselves in. For many, mortgage rates are hitting hard, as are rental prices as a proportion of income.

Council rates for some are now threefold what they were in my first term. Then add the anxiety of what the next supermarket docket will be. How can the already stretched and limited ratepayer base be asked to dig deeper into already committed pockets?

Do we make the tough priority choices and reduce our growing council shopping list, at least until NZ has weathered this economic storm? I say we do. Or do we believe we can spend and borrow our way out of it, to indebt or limit future generations’ options? This is a tool that needs to be used with greater constraint, in my view, with an understanding that debt needs to be serviced and then reduced when the sun shines again.

Prior generations had financial challenges and greater periods of hardship.

But something that stands out to me is that for those generations, it brought them closer together in unity, stoicism, selflessness, compassion and teamwork.

It concerns me greatly that we are distracted by division, blame and anger on global issues in response to our perceived own challenges, rather than empathy and support. Energy should be directed at unifying and protecting our community not dividing it. Our focus should be on improving our region’s productivity, social wellbeing and supporting each other’s endeavours.

I want our community to continue to look out for the vulnerable, build bridges rather than barriers, and forge ahead unified, as prior generations did for us.

I hope Council endeavours to do our part during difficult decisions this week that determine the next 10 years’ rates budget and direction, to benefit our community, enabling following generations to also flourish.