October 20, 2019
Powell has iwi in sights for bringing Tauranga together
Tauranga’s new mayor says the city is divided socially and culturally and needs healing.
Tenby Powell has inherited some major issues to tackle.
These include repairing slip damage on Mauao and the proposed return of land beside The Elms mission station to the Ōtamataha trust representing mana whenua hapū, which the previous council failed to reach agreement on.
He says they’re issues the full council will need to work on, but he has already had preliminary discussions with iwi.
The council hasn’t been good at community engagement, which is why he has come up with his Tauranga together strategy.
"There is a lot of pain out there and I held a series of community meetings called Community Matters and there was a consistency around all those meetings where people talked about lack of community engagement and that they were feeling really left out of a bigger picture and they were feeling isolated and many of their wards or their suburbs, they felt quite aggrieved so I think we are a city that has been divided and as a result of those long term divisions we are a city that needs healing," Mr Powell says.
He says local government has a legal duty to have a partnership with iwi.
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