The economic development strategy for Dunedin, outlining the vision, strategic direction and some initial ways of getting there was adopted by the Dunedin City Council yesterday, the last of six partner organisations that have spent the past three years developing the strategy, to sign off the document.
The other partner organisations are the University of Otago, Otago Polytechnic, Otago Chamber of Commerce, Otago Southland Employers' Association and Ngai Tahu.
A significant portion of yesterday's Dunedin City Council full meeting was given over to discussion of the strategy, which has a vision of Dunedin being the best small city in the world and a goal of creating 10,000 extra jobs and an extra $10,000 per person in the next 10 years.
During the discussion the strategy was described as everything from holistic to "neat", while the process was recommended and the consultation of more than 4000 individuals and organisations and 90 submissions praised.
The "desire" now was to develop by the end of the year a plan for implementing the projects it wanted to get under way first, deputy mayor Chris Staynes, the chairman of the strategy steering group, said.
Those projects include everything from reducing city council red tape for businesses, to developing industry clusters, to attracting more international investment and students.
The final draft of the strategy supplied to councillors last week outlined seven initial projects to get on with, chosen because they were already scoped or started.
An eighth originally included, but missing in the final draft presented to councillors, was restored yesterday.
Cr Staynes said the development of an energy strategy was dropped from the initial project list because he "forgot" that funding had been allocated to the project in this year's annual plan, and was not aware, until made so late last week, that work had already started on it.
Crs John Bezett and Syd Brown questioned whether enough had been done on the strategy to include it as one of the initial projects and whether the partner groups were in agreement, but Cr Staynes said he had contacted them and they were.
Crs Jinty MacTavish and Richard Thomson welcomed its return.
Older people might not appreciate it so much, Cr Thomson said, but the strategy needed to engage all sectors of the city and an energy strategy was much more important for younger people than for "us old fellas".
