The annual ALGIM conference, held at Wairakei Resort in November, offers participants a range of inspirational speakers, presentations and technical training programmes.  This year the event, themed “Opportunities Through Technology”, explored the latest social, educational and financial opportunities that technology is providing within local government. 

Delegates were acquainted with groundbreaking case studies by numerous New Zealand councils that entered the prestigious ALGIM Innovation Awards, sponsored by Microsoft NZ.  The national awards programme showcases top IT solutions that are leading local authorities into the future and recognises outstanding projects that apply technology in innovative ways.  In 2009 more councils than ever before shared their successes as an expert panel of judges selected the supreme winners.

Newly released documents detailing Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s fact-finding trip to the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States reveals that over 12 days away he undertook only 10 hours of meetings on Auckland governance, according to North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams.

“Aucklanders will be fascinated to learn that, according to the official trip diary, Rodney Hide spent around 10 hours on Auckland governance, three-and-a-half hours on regulatory reform, four-and-a-half hours on ACT party policy, one hour in media interviews, and seven-and-a-half hours having breakfast and lunch with his tour party who accompanied him on the trip,” Mayor Williams said.

Healing Te Rerenga Wairua – the Cape Reinga upgrade project combined environmental excellence, social, cultural and economic benefits melded together into an award-winning project that has transformed one of New Zealand’s most iconic sites from a light house at the end of a dusty road into a visual experience that would be hard to equal anywhere in the world.

The site and the project to renew it, has a very high public profile with a large number of significant stakeholders. The outcome of this highly successful project will have a profoundly positive and lasting impact on the local community, the environment, and the Northland region as a whole.

Tasman District Council recently awarded MWH the design and construction monitoring contract for the important new development of a recreational marina at Port Golden Bay (formerly Port Tarakohe). 

The port is 15 minutes from Takaka and is located alongside the beautiful beaches of Golden Bay and the Abel Tasman National Park making it a key tourism destination for domestic and international visitors.

Newly released documents detailing Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s fact-finding trip to the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States reveals that over 12 days away he undertook only 10 hours of meetings on Auckland governance, according to North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams.

“Aucklanders will be fascinated to learn that, according to the official trip diary, Rodney Hide spent around 10 hours on Auckland governance, three-and-a-half hours on regulatory reform, four-and-a-half hours on ACT party policy, one hour in media interviews, and seven-and-a-half hours having breakfast and lunch with his tour party who accompanied him on the trip,” Mayor Williams said.

Shakespeare’s line from Hamlet has been quoted (and misquoted) so often that it has reached cliché status, but occasionally there is a genuine reason to haul it out and dust it off.
Michael Laws’s vigorous insistence that Wanganui has never had and will never have the letter H in its name is one of those times.
Now far be it for this magazine to tell anyone what to do, say or think, but Mr Laws’s snarling righteousness on this matter is starting to wear thin, especially his treatment of a group of Otaki students who had the temerity to write to him and suggest that it made more sense from a Maori perspective to spell the placename “Whanganui”.