Award celebration marks step-up for Vision Motueka

July 19th, 2014

Community development group Vision Motueka is preparing to take a "step up" by expanding its board of trustees and tackling some larger scale, longer term projects.

Chairman David Armstrong spoke of the new developments at a public meeting on Thursday, held to celebrate with interested people the group's Trustpower community award win early this month (see our story here).

About 20 people shared finger food and ideas before David summarised the past two and a half years of plans and work by Vision Motueka and outlined recent developments that will mean some big changes ahead.

He said that although the group started out with some big projects in mind - mainly the creation of a community and visitor hub in Decks Reserve - its first two years of work focused mainly on projects that could be done now.

It was for those projects - such as the murals, volunteers awards, music network website and community Christmas dinner - that the Trustpower award was given.

"These projects are now well organised and run by sub-committees without the Vision Motueka core team having to do a lot, so it's time to begin thinking again about what larger and longer term projects we can look at," David said.

"It almost seems an alignment of stars that the award, recognising what we have done to date, marks the start of a new phase of community involvement, and gives us the confidence to take that next step."

One simple change will be that the monthly public meeting of the committee, which normally monitors the projects being run and looks at ideas for possible new projects, will become a public community forum with guest speakers.

People and community groups will be invited to speak at these forums to put forward constructive ideas they have about projects that will improve the town and the community, and see what help there may be to advance their ideas.

The other challenge Vision wants to take on is to provide community input into what planning takes place to develop a library-based community hub in Wallace Street, now looking more likely than ever.

Cr Judene Edgar, who attended the celebration on Thursday and answered questions about the library, said Tasman District Council will decide on July 31st if it will take up the community board's recommendation to re-institute the library planning team (see our story here).

Judene, who has openly praised Vision Motueka as showing the way in which communities can organise themselves and work with Councils, said if the working party does restart, Vision this time will take a key role in its deliberations.

Vision Motueka was the group which first came up with a concrete proposal of a hub based on a library and Council service centre. (See that proposal.)

David said that if serious work was to begin on such a project, which the mayor says would have to involve a Council/community partnership, the Vision Motueka board of trustees would have to increase its personnel and skill set and ensure the plans reflect broad community wishes.

Comment by Beth Bryant:
[Posted 20 July 2014]

Well done, Vision Motueka. More community input sounds a great idea, too. We desperately need a new library.

How come Mapua looks to spend the Motueka wharf fund for an aquarium? Surely that pot of money could be put to better use for a library for Motueka. A library in a country area is more of a basic than an aquarium is.

Last time I looked Motueka Library had more people through the door than Richmond library had (admittedly that was a few years ago).

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