⚽️It’s been a busy weekend. Yesterday, we had the local soccer club’s end-of-season breakup. For the first time in many years I wasn’t involved in organising it after stepping down from the committee following my cancer prognosis from my haematologist at the end of last year. I said to the folk there that it was a little odd to be presenting the “Iain MacLean Memorial Trophy” when I was not yet ‘in memoriam’. That flew over the children’s heads, as I hoped it would, but some parents got it.

This afternoon, we held a meeting at our local RSA about Porirua City Council’s decision to stop funding their international award-wining Village Planning Programme as part of their latest Long Term Plan. I know councils are under a lot of pressure to focus on infrastructure, and they need to do that, and community development programmes look like a soft target. PCC has saved over $800,000 ($600,000 capex and $200,000+ opex in staff costs). Community development programmes are important, but unfortunately, they aren’t politically appealing.

We have 14 groups in Porirua who have been part of the Village Planning Programme, and many of them formed because of the support they could get from PCC. We all have plans for our communities, and our work doesn’t all involve the council, although they do have a role in some parts of it. We didn’t get as many groups along to today’s meeting as we hoped, but we’ll keep engaging with all of them.

We want to get those groups together to go back to council to tell PCC what they can continue to do for us so we can keep our community-based work going. It shouldn’t take much from council, just some designated people who have it as part of their job. We had a very good guy at the council we could rely on, but PCC restructured him from his job and how he has retired.

It would be a shame to lose the momentum we have in the city. Essentially, we are talking about placemaking and we want to keep it going.