Good morning everyone.

Wellington has experienced one of the wettest July’s on record, which has resulted in a large number of slips and other storm damage in the city in recent weeks.

Last week I visited the site of the Ngaio Gorge slip, one of the biggest ever in the city, which is unlikely to be cleared for at least another week.

Call Centre inundated

For July and up to Friday (4 August) there have been 2500 weather related calls, including:

300 reported slips across the city
190 events of flooding and blocked sumps
260 trees that needed urgent attending

Despite the challenges thrown up by the wild weather, the delivery of council services continued uninterrupted, and that’s something we can all be proud of.

Thank you to everyone who has been working long and hard to keep the city safe. Some of the work is dangerous, especially when it comes to assessing the safety of homes at risk from slips. A big thank you to our Infrastructure team - in particular Deven Singh who has handled the many media questions on the frontline with aplomb – and crews in Parks, Sport and Recreation and Community Services. Thanks also to the media team for staying on top of the myriad incidents and keeping journalists informed in a timely manner.

100 Resilient Cities Summit in New York
I attended the 100 Resilient Cities Summit in New York with Mike Mendonca, our Chief Resilience Officer, who has done a lot of work in the last year or so preparing Wellington’s Resilience Strategy. While we have a long way to go, it was encouraging to see that Wellington’s work in this area is highly regarded, and we were asked on several occasions to share our experiences with other cities. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own work and don’t get the chance to reflect on the progress we’re making, so it was great to see how we are performing relative to other cities.

Silver medal for our 2015/16 Annual Report
Congratulations to everyone involved with our 2015/16 Annual Report, which received a silver medal at the Australasian Reporting Awards. The award is a reminder that the public documents we produce are not just about our performance as an organisation – they are also an opportunity to communicate effectively with our stakeholders.

Good reads
In addition to the piece on the 100 Resilient Cities Summit, here are a few others you might be interested in:

Wendy McGuiness’ presentation on what it would take for Wellington to be the best city in the world. Wendy says a great city has five characteristics: creativity, connectivity, certainty, choice and courage. Sound familiar?
Sean Audain on smart cities and the emerging theme that this is a city project, not a tech project. For those that don’t know, Sean works in my office, and what I like about this piece is it is a simple, clear explanation of a smart city.
Some interesting ideas from outside of New Zealand at possible solutions to housing affordability issues. I like this because it looks, with a different lens, at the challenge of providing adequate, secure and affordable housing and suggestions for tackling them.

Health and Safety
Finally, your health and safety is important to me and the Executive Leadership Team. Improving health and safety requires constant vigilance and measuring our performance, which is why I encourage you to respond to the next ‘Health and Safety Climate Survey’. You will receive an email on this later this month and it’s important you take 10 minutes to respond and help make the Council a safer place to work.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

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