Watching the pōhutakawa turn red, and locals head back to our parks and beaches, I’m excited to see summer arrive and see the end of a very challenging 2020 for many of you in our community, Aotearoa and the world.

Some good news is the heavy rainfall and La Niña weather patterns that have been forecast over summer. Well, it’s not great news for camping but it’s seriously good news for our water storage and our water restrictions which are more likely to be relaxed.

Thanks to your efforts, we saved six billion litres of water this year. After many dry months our reservoirs/dams are finally over 70% full. This is down to the huge water saving efforts across the community as rainfall in September and October were both less than half their average levels; in a ‘normal’ year our dams would be more than 90% full right now. As I write, we are now days away from deciding whether to loosen restrictions over summer. That is a huge accomplishment for a year that began with 78 days of no rain which developed into the longest and worst drought in Auckland’s history.

We do still need rain but we now have access to an extra 40 million litres per day more than we did last year. This is due to new and expanded sources including Hickeys Bore, the Hays Creek Dam, additional take from the Waikato and the Onehunga Bore. We will also be able to take even  more water from the Waikato River from June 2021. This was all funded by you, through our emergency budget.

There’s no doubt climate change will continue to exacerbate this situation so we have a lot of hard work to go in completing our long term water strategy. The additional sources do, however, provide a bit more of a buffer from low rainfall and more confidence coming into summer.

With our budget cut due to Covid and the $500m revenue loss it has been difficult to see many staff made redundant and many projects put on hold. We aren’t out of the woods yet but I will keep fighting for our community to secure budgets we need; like the funding we saved for the Hurstmere Rd upgrade, our libraries and the important local board budgets that go to our community groups and services.

As our finances struggle and likely so do yours we will need the same consideration and resolve that saw us through the early stages of Covid and let us reduce the restrictions months ago. I congratulate our Prime Minster, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, our phenomenal health workers, public service, essential workers and all of you for pulling together and getting into a much better space than what could’ve been, if we think back to March.

For me personally it has been an overwhelming year, lots of tough times supporting our community and making tough calls at council but on the positive front as an uncle I welcomed three new members of my family this year: Micah, Penelope, and Archie. Having missed a lot of the early moments to lockdown, I’m particularly looking forward to spending time with them over the Christmas/New Year period.

Have a great summer, be safe, enjoy the time with family and friends, and thank you.