Next Meet the Candidates meeting is at Tamahere September 20.

If you are enrolled to vote you will receive your voting papers for Local and Regional Government roles sometime within the next week. They will include details of how to vote and profiles of the candidates seeking election.

Any questions you have may be addressed here: https://www.waikatodistrict.govt.nz/your-council/local-elections-2022/faqs . If you are voting by mail you need to post the papers by 4 October to ensure Council receives them in time.

We were pleased to host all of the Mayoral candidates and most of the candidates for the Tamahere Woodlands General Ward at the Matangi Hall last weekend. It was great to have the opportunity to hear from and chat to the candidates. It was also important to be able to acknowledge and thank Rob McGuire for being a Councillor for the people in this area for 39 years. Ian Wallace spoke for the Matangi community and Dennis Ticklepenny for Newstead. Ian noted that Rob was always ready to act for all residents and had been a constant support in attending and speaking to local meetings. Dennis let us know that he and Rob became friends in school days and still had never had a cross word. For his part Rob said that being a Councillor had been important to him and hard to leave. From working hard at the begining of that time to ensure rural roads were sealed he was proud to having been involved in the tasks and issues before the council through the transition to larger local authority areas.

Residents on the General Roll in our area are in a new situation of needing to elect two Councillors who need to work together in a much larger Ward. We also need a new Mayor! The next meet the Candidates meeting is in Tamahere on September 20 https://www.waikatodistrict.govt.nz/events/upcoming-events/2022/09/20/default-calendar/meet-the-candidates—tamahere

You may notice when you receive them that the profiles provided with the voting papers are quite brief. In the interests of offering extra information to residents we will begin Soapbox news posts – in the order they are received Matangilink will publish articles submitted to us from candidates for election