Consultation on Hamilton City Council’s 2021-31 draft Long-Term Plan is now closed, with a record number of people sharing their voice.
The campaign to capture Hamiltonians’ feedback is the most engaging Council has ever run, with the 5674 submissions a 159% increase on the 2190 received on the previous Long-Term Plan.
Across the four-week campaign, more than 20,000 people visited the www.futurehamilton.co.nz website to read about the draft Long-Term Plan and make a submission. Council staff also attended or organised more than 40 events where people had the opportunity to talk about what’s in the plan and share their feedback face to face.
Mayor Paula Southgate has thanked Hamiltonians for helping to shape their city’s future, and also thanked Council staff who developed and ran an easy-to-use process.
“Community feedback is crucial in letting Elected Members know what is important. No decisions have been made yet and Councillors and I will now take the time to digest the feedback before we decide anything.”
As well as the 5674 submissions, the Council received 2283 comments about the Plan through its social media channels. The campaign also initiated the use of an artificial intelligence chatbot to capture feedback, which generated 191 responses. The themes of these comments and responses will also be made available to Elected Members to help guide their decision making.
Consultation has also closed on the proposed changes to Council’s Revenue and Financing Policy, Development Contributions Policy and Growth Funding Policy, which received 41, 62 and 19 submissions respectively.
Verbal submissions on these policies and the draft Long-Term Plan are being held on 13 to 15 April. From there, Elected Members will process all feedback from the community ahead of deliberations to update the draft plan in early May.