Articles

My Summary of the TCC Age-Friendly City Strategy 2013 – 2023

This is article #5 in my 16 part series summarising Tauranga City Council strategy documents.

Here is my summary of the Tauranga City Council Age-Friendly Strategy (45 pages. 3.9Mb .pdf).

We keep hearing about the world’s ageing population. The demographics of Tauranga have always been skewed towards the elderly. So, from a council perspective, issues that affect our elders, have always been on our minds.

This strategy had a number of feel-good ideas that I agreed with. Here are just 4 examples from the action list: Continue reading “My Summary of the TCC Age-Friendly City Strategy 2013 – 2023”

My Summary of the TCC City Centre Strategy 2012

This is article #4 in my 16 part series summarising Tauranga City Council strategy documents.

Here is my summary of the Tauranga City Council City Centre Strategy 2012 (135 pages. 22Mb .pdf).

This document was one of the biggest ones in this series: 135 pages.

I work in the city centre every day, so the city centre issues are in front of my eyes all the time. But I suspect that those of you that live and work in the self-contained suburbs of The Mount, Papamoa, Greerton and others, and rarely have cause to come to the CBD, care much less about the CBD.

But I think if we had a CBD to be proud of, all of us would share in that pride whether we made use of the area on a daily basis or not.

There are 5 sections on this document that interested me the most. Continue reading “My Summary of the TCC City Centre Strategy 2012”

My Summary of the TCC Tauranga Transport Strategy 2012-2042

This is article #3 in my 16 part series summarising Tauranga City Council strategy documents.

Just so you know, there was a lot of overlap between:

Those documents together were 271 pages, a huge 27% chunk of my reading.

My notes below focus on the TCC strategy, not the TUNS.

This was my another very exciting strategy document. I was fascinated.

I found it exciting for 3 reasons: Continue reading “My Summary of the TCC Tauranga Transport Strategy 2012-2042”

My Summary of the TCC Infrastructure Strategy 2015 – 2045

This is article #2 in my 16 part series summarising Tauranga City Council strategy documents.

Here is my summary of the Tauranga City Council Infrastructure Strategy 2015 – 2045 (24 pages. 680kb .pdf).

I found this strategy document hugely interesting for 3 reasons:

  1. The time scale is huge: 30 years (and 50 years for some of the projections)
  2. The financial investment is huge: billions and billions of dollars
  3. The number of people joining us by 2045 is huge. Increase everything by 50%.
    • 50% more people, 50% more houses, 50% more jobs, 50% more traffic on the roads etc

Let’s take a closer look. Continue reading “My Summary of the TCC Infrastructure Strategy 2015 – 2045”

4 Lessons From 1029 Pages Of Tauranga City Council Strategy

I love to read.

Lucky for me because early on in my research for becoming a Tauranga City Councillor I was told that councillors do a lot of reading.

So I started with the Long Term Plan, and next I took on 16 Tauranga City Council documents I found on the strategies page of the TCC website.

  • I stitched them together in a single pdf that was 1029 pages long
  • It took me 6 weeks to read it from cover to cover
  • It took me another 4 weeks to write my summaries
  • I got up at 5.15am every morning (including Saturdays and Sundays) and read for a 60 – 90 minutes before my 3 sons woke up
  • I loved it!
  • The documents were all well written, easy to read, good layout, lots of photos and diagrams and maps, lots of headings and bullet points

Continue reading “4 Lessons From 1029 Pages Of Tauranga City Council Strategy”

Need A Job In Tauranga?

Why are you looking for a new job in Tauranga?

  • Are you looking to change your career?
  • Have you just moved to Tauranga from Auckland or elsewhere in NZ (or the world)?

Well, I’ve got good news. I get asked for job hunting advice all the time, so I’ve created the following guide for you.

But first, does your job hunting plan look like this?

  1. job-applicationsTrawl through job ads on Seek, TradeMe Jobs and a couple of other sites
  2. Find jobs that look interesting and throw your CV at them
  3. Wait
  4. And wait some more
  5. And apply for some more (on the assumption that it takes 100 applications to get an interview)
  6. And wait some more

Does it feel like an enormous waste of time?

That’s because it is!

Try this 7 step approach instead. Continue reading “Need A Job In Tauranga?”

5min Video: “What do you love about Tauranga?”

I was invited to speak for 5 minutes at the Priority One AGM recently.

Watch my answer to the question “What do you love about Tauranga?”


Will You Contribute To Tauranga’s 7 Day Makeover In May 2016?

Just a few moments ago I got back from a breakfast workshop run by Downtown Tauranga.

Sally showed us the following TEDx talk “Add some magic to a public space near you” by David Engwicht. 

Sally paused the video a few times and during the pauses we did about 5 minutes of brainstorming in small groups about how we could apply what we were learning to Tauranga.

In a nutshell, it’s about organising a 7 day makeover for Tauranga (hopefully in May).

Together, we choose 1 (or more) spaces to work with and citizens like you and me contribute ideas to fill that space with things that make us smile, laugh, and connect us together.

There is 1 rule. It is: Continue reading “Will You Contribute To Tauranga’s 7 Day Makeover In May 2016?”

What Can Happen When You Have 90 Minutes All To Yourself

I’ve just realised that I do my best thinking on planes.

And during my most recent flight, I made, what might be, one of the most important decisions of my life.

I had 90 minutes all to myself. No email. No phone calls. No wife. No kids. No wifi. No internet. No distractions.

I had just 2 choices.

  1. Read (Either the in-flight magazine, or whatever I had previously downloaded to my ebook reader)
  2. Think

I chose the latter.

Over the last few weeks I had compiled a list of all my fears, concerns, objections, worries that had been brought to my attention by friends, family and acquaintances. Continue reading “What Can Happen When You Have 90 Minutes All To Yourself”

My Vision For Tauranga

Hi, my name is Sheldon Nesdale and in a moment I would like to share my vision for Tauranga with you.

If my vision resonates with you, I will ask for your help. I need your help to:

  1. Share the vision with your friends/family/neighbours/colleagues (the more people you share it with, the more chance it has of coming true)
  2. Vote for me (and encourage others to vote for me), at the 2016 Tauranga City Council elections on Saturday 8 October 2016

Before I tell you about my vision for Tauranga, I have a confession to make.

This is not my vision. It’s yours.

It didn’t come from me. It came from everyone I’ve talked to so far.

On the surface, they were talking about issues that were dear to them, but beneath the surface, I think this is what their hearts were trying to tell me. Continue reading “My Vision For Tauranga”