A Caring Community - August 2009

I’m both surprised and encouraged by how often people ask me how my family are, and how it is for them with their husband/ father involved in such a high profile job.

To be fair, the order of questions normally goes something like this.  How much are you going to put the rates up next year? Are you enjoying the role? How is your family coping with you doing this job? It highlights a couple of things to me. 

Firstly, it reminds me what a caring community we live in and secondly, how important families and friendships are.
There is an old Maori proverb that says; He aha te mea nui? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata.  Which means, what is the most important thing?

It is people, it is people, it is people.  In the busyness of life it’s really easy for us to take the people around us for granted, whether it is our family, our friends, neighbours or our community at large. 

To value people takes time and effort.  The great thing is that it is an investment that produces valuable returns, in the short and long term.
A few months ago I mentioned a book called “Change the world for 15 bucks” that contains 50 great and inexpensive actions to make the world a better place.  Action 35 is called a short cut to friendship, and says this: “the best way to make friends is to be friends. 

Offer to mow someone’s lawn if they’re elderly.  Collect your neighbour’s mail while they’re away.  Take someone’s dog for a walk.  Give your phone number to five people in your street.  Visit some people near you and take a plate. 

Better yet, organize a BBQ for the neighbourhood or a potluck dinner at your place.”
No one could deny that if we all took up challenges such as this, our communities would be more cohesive and nicer places to be.  Sure, it takes a little time, but as the cheese ad tells us; good things take time.

Finally, in case you’re wondering what the answers are to the questions in the first paragraph:  I can’t promise a particular number for the rates increase next year, but I do promise that we will be working extremely hard to keep it as low as possible, I am loving my role as mayor of this fantastic city and my family seem to be coping amazingly well. I feel extremely grateful to have such an amazing wife and awesome children.