It was great to have a passionate roomful of rangatahi and youth leaders bringing their questions, concerns and passion to the council meeting in chambers this week.

It is positive for our community that the next generation is coming through, looking for ways they can make change and grow and contribute to our community. I look forward to working more with these groups throughout this year.

I also see the weather is looking sunny for this weekend’s Ōpōtiki Lantern Festival.

Each year, this great local event brings music, food and a family-friendly vibe to our town, so make sure you head down.

You may have seen some recent publicity about the Mayoral Disaster Relief Fund.

The fund aims to help people, organisations like marae and volunteer groups, and small businesses in our district who have been affected by recent flooding and storm damage.

If you have tried all other avenues, like insurance and Work and Income, but are still out of pocket and struggling to meet the costs of clearing debris or replacing essential items, then I encourage you to apply through the council website.

On the topic of things to check out on the council website – you may have seen the front page of last week’s Ōpōtiki News and the opportunity to help design the signs at the entry and exit to Ōpōtiki town.

What a fun and colourful way to get involved and remember some of our history at the same time.

For tragic reasons, animal control is back in the news across the motu.

Here in town, we have to contend with all sorts of issues around dogs, horses and other roaming stock, and a recent and very passionate plea for cat registration as well.

For a small provincial council like Ōpōtiki, it can be really important to have national leadership and consistency on this topic. It is a patchwork of complex and different legislation and responsibilities.

Dog registration is paid by dog owners to help over the costs of dog control in the district. But it is not completely user-pays as everyone pays a little bit from their rates to cover that part of council operations.

We don’t have the same approach for horse registration (or cat registration for that matter) as there is not an equivalent to the Dog Control Act and councils around the country approach this differently.

And that doesn’t even touch on pest specifies like feral cats (there are at least 2.4 million feral cats in New Zealand), rats or the wallaby problems of our neighbouring areas.

Education and encouraging responsible pet ownership needs absolute support as it’s just not acceptable to have residents overrun with abandoned or neglected cats in town.

And finally, work continues at pace with bay-wide meetings and updates on a raft of changes happening in local government – Simplifying Local Government, Local Water Done Well, civil defence and emergency proposals, and transport changes.

There will be opportunities for community input and discussion on many of these over the coming months.