“Topsy Town?”

Paihia, like Topsy, just “growed”. With no proper town plan to guide its layout or infrastructure, the little town just kind of happened. When the place was a beach, a motel, two stores and a few dozen houses that didn’t matter much but by the booming mid-1980s, a coherent plan was really needed. Two decades later, we still don’t have one.
Now a major community workshop on 17th June is going to be invited to do some dreaming and put in place a planning process in which the community can develop its own considered vision for the future. Over the next three months there’ll be focus groups that will canvass opinion and shape up policy around major areas. Then there’ll be a couple more large community gatherings to review and finalise our vision for Paihia.
This considered statement of the community’s view will be presented to the Council in early 2010. We will have done by ourselves what successive Councils have so far failed to do for us. And it’s going to be fun.

www.paihianz.co.nz/community

focusonpaihia@xtra.co.nz