Porirua City Council, in partnership with Ngāti Toa, released the city’s Recovery Plan last week, outlining how the city will get back on its feet from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Our Covid-19 recovery plan addresses the big issues in our community as we come to terms with the impact of the pandemic and focuses on sustainable social and economic recovery," Porirua Mayor Anita Baker says.
"We’ve had conversations with over 30 local community organisations and agencies and surveyed a wider group of 500 people to better understand the challenges and opportunities that our city is facing."
Feedback from the public made it clear that they want Council to demonstrate strong leadership in the Covid-19 response and strengthen its role as a co-ordinator, advocate and facilitator.
"Our community also raised issues such as emergency housing, food insecurity, financial stability and youth unemployment as major areas of concern.
"We want to make sure we do right by our community and as a Council we are determined to play our part by responding to the short, medium and long-term challenges our city is facing," Mayor Baker says.
The plan outlines how Porirua City Council will work with Ngāti Toa across a number of recovery initiatives, including continued work on a Skills and Employment Hub in eastern Porirua.
It focuses on both the business and the wider community and places a specific emphasis on support for young people and local community organisations.
It has been adopted by Council as a "living document", Mayor Baker says, with an agile approach allowing the ability to focus on emerging issues and identify new initiatives as they come up, in collaboration with our community.
As part of the plan, the Council will report back to Council and the community every quarter. The next update will be before Christmas.
A summary of community feedback and key performance indicators have now been updated on our website as part of our new Covid-19 response and recovery section. This can be found here https://poriruacity.govt.nz/services/alerts-updates/covid-19-support/.
Mayor Baker says the progress reports will keep the Council accountable against each measure.
"Some of our initiatives will show quick improvements and others will take longer to achieve, such as reducing unemployment, but I am positive that by working together our community in Porirua can rise up to this challenge," she says.
The Recovery Plan, and updates, can be found at www.poriruacity.govt.nz/covid-recovery12 Oct 2020
