We invite you to participate by sharing your knowledge and providing your ideas at a public workshop!
Background
We are creating the Port Waikato Local Area Blueprint and we want to hear what is important to you and your village!
The Waikato District Blueprint (Blueprint) aims to achieve the overall vision established by Council for the district to create Liveable, Thriving and Connected Communities. The aim of the Blueprint is to provide a high-level ‘spatial picture’ of how the district could progress over the next 30 years, address the community’s social, economic and environmental needs, and respond to its regional context.
In 2018 we visited a number of towns and villages around the district to hear what was important to these communities and what they wanted to see in their community in the future. During these workshops we heard lots of great ideas.
In June 2019, the Blueprint was adopted by Waikato District Council.
We will work with the community to achieve and prioritize the projects or initiatives identified in the Council-led and Community-led Blueprints. In some instances, there may be perfect opportunities for the community to drive a project, with some assistance and/or funding from Waikato District Council and other agencies.
We began working in your community to develop the Gordonton Local Area Blueprint with a questionnaire seeking your community’s ideas over November 2021 to January 2022, due to COVID-19 restrictions.
We followed the questionnaire with a Public Workshop on 3rd May 2022, where residents and community groups provided their concerns, knowledge and ideas to achieve the community’s wants and needs, now and into the future, to inform the Local Area Blueprint.
Your responses to the questionnaire and the public workshop have informed and been developed into initiatives that will support your village. Some of the priorities identified included:
- Continue with the erosion project and work and provide ongoing communications
- Undertake public realm upgrade of the wharf area as a gateway to the community
- Erect signage to mark and explain the history and cultural significance of areas to mana whenua
We now look forward to meeting with you to identify your top priorities for your community!
Come along to the public drop-in session, any time between 3pm to 7pm, to identify your top initiatives for your community.
If you can’t make it to the public drop-in session, you can still have your say on your top initiatives through Shape Waikato!
The online consultation will open on Monday 20th June and will close Thursday 23rd June 2022. You can find the online consultation here.
The Meremere Local Area Blueprint identified the need to “Provide support to beautification initiatives, assisting with community pride in the place. Consider streetscape, entrance signs, house numbers.”
Houses in Meremere now have a very distinguishing feature – house numbers. House numbers are important to Meremere as the township doesn’t have letterboxes. This means emergency services rely on house numbers for location. Toi Ako Artspace from nearby Te Kauwhata led the Meremere Street Number Project in partnership with Meremere local artist, Melysa Tapiata. The project was funded by a donation from the Te Kauwhata Community Committee, and Meremere residents were able to attend one of six offered workshops where they would create their own painted or mosaic street number. Alternatively, residents were able to order a mosaic kit and design their own number at home.
Almost 100 residents participated in some way, producing 80 colour creative and inspiring home numbers for the village. This is a blueprint win!