Mayors message

I hope you all had an enjoyable and restful Christmas and New Year break, recharging the batteries for what is likely to be a busy, exciting, but potentially challenging year ahead.

The global pandemic continues to make its presence felt, and again I want to thank our community for all the efforts that have been made to get vaccinated – now moving onto getting booster shots and taking up the opportunity to vaccinate 5 to 11 year olds.

Over the last two years our health providers and others supporting the vaccination rollouts to make our community safe have worked extremely hard and we are so grateful for their efforts, which are ongoing.

It was fantastic that our region reached its 90 per cent vaccination target just after Christmas – it’s this commitment that will help us continue to be resilient through the year ahead.

With the move to the Red traffic light COVID setting across the country, and the prospect of Omicron arriving, we must remain committed to doing everything we can to keep our community safe.

It’s a good time to make a plan for your whānau, neighbours and friends on how you will manage if someone in your household becomes infected and how you can help each other.

The change to the Red setting is really challenging for our events and hospitality sectors, and we are grateful for their efforts are to help keep our community safe.

Despite these challenging times, there are so many things to look forward to throughout the coming year ahead.

2022 brings with it much hope! Hastings Is Happening!!! Our economy is experiencing enormous growth and we have an exciting line up of new facilities, new programmes and projects in progress; and many others will be completed this year. 

My highlights are the re-opening of the Municipal buildings after eight years, completing the Frimley Water Storage project, starting construction of our regional arts and storage facility, embarking on the first stage to revitalise Civic Square, opening a new Quest Hotel, completing our $82m Safe Drinking Water Strategy, opening the new Community Fitness Centre regional swimming pool, and building homes for our people - including new apartments in the city.

We have an exciting year ahead - we are certainly ‘Hyped on Hastings’.

Keep safe and keep well.

Ngā mihi

31 January 2022

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