Mayor's Message: Another step on recovery journey

I hosted Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell on Monday in Nelson. The purpose of the visit was to finalise Government funding on both recovery and resilience work and to share our experiences with Government on how we can better manage the recovery from such emergencies in future.

The August 2022 storm was the worst disaster to hit our city in 50 years. The previous Government’s initial decision to decline financial support for the recovery became untenable as hundreds of millions was being poured into Cyclone Gabrielle-affected communities. The $12.3 million we provisionally agreed last August had $6 million to build back better, $6 million to fund 50% of the cost of property buyouts and $300,000 for ongoing monitoring of the Tāhunanui Slump.

This was conditional on Council funding the other 50% of the buyouts and approving the deal after consultation via our Long Term Plan process, which we did on 27 June. This funding agreement has now been signed and letters have been sent to property owners assessed as eligible for the voluntary buy-out scheme. This, 22 months after the event, will provide overdue certainty for these Nelsonians.

I regret this has taken so long. I advocated a more streamlined approach. Councils have access to special powers during a civil emergency but not for the recovery phase. We could speed up the recovery for communities if Councils had access to fast-track processes for funding and consenting disaster recovery work.

Council is also very focused on improving our resilience to future events. We are, through Plan Change 29, tightening the rules on where development can occur. We can never 100% guarantee the suitability of land for development, but we need to get smarter. We are partnering with EQC, GNS Science and geotechnical experts on research to improve our management of these risks.

I also discussed with the Minister advancing the detailed agreement for the additional $9 million announced in Budget ’24 for improving flood resilience. This will enable Council to strengthen stop banks, flood intakes and stormwater systems in areas that failed in August 2022.

This work is part of delivering on my top commitment to Nelson when I stood for Mayor just after the ’22 storm. I pledged to get our city fixed as quickly as possible, to build back better, to secure as much funding for this work from whomever was in Government and that I would work to improve our resilience to future events.

Mayor Nick Smith