In this series, The Central App chats with a number of the region’s newsmakers. 

This week, Central Otago District Mayor Tim Cadogan answers some questions on his thoughts on the year that was 2020. 

What can you tell me about the year that was, from your perspective? 

“Like everyone else, I found 2020 to be full of challenges that were mostly unexpected.  

“To be a community leader at a time when the country went into lockdown in the face of a pandemic was a privilege but one that weighed heavily at times.  

“Like many, I found the need to “do something” when there was nothing to do in some regards but to stay home was damn frustrating.  

“I think Kiwi’s are more used to being able to get stuck in at times of crisis, filling sandbags, making sandwiches and so on.” 

What were your highlights? 

“I’m not sure if it would be called a highlight but the thing I will always remember from this year was being in the Emergency Operations Centre a couple of days before lockdown when we were told by the higher authorities that, based on Covid case numbers locally, the age of our population and what had been seen in Spain and Italy, we didn’t have enough morgue space for the fatalities we could expect in Central.  

“That room had probably 20 people in it who a few days before had been Council staff doing their normal jobs (with a couple of exceptions) and they had to take that on board, swallow deeply and get on with solving that problem.  

“I will never forget the courage of those people as they did that.  Nor will I ever stop being grateful that, despite those dire warnings, we lost no-one to the pandemic in Central.” 

What were your challenges? 

“A big one was working out the Annual Plan in the midst of unprecedented uncertainty. This is essentially the Council budget for the year, and is something that has to be completed within legislative timeframes, pandemic or not.  

“Council made the best decisions it could based on economic predictions that turned out to be totally inaccurate.  

“Some of those decisions will have implications in the Long Term Plan (LTP) next year as increased costs that were covered by using reserves last year (which is unsustainable) come back into play.”

What are you hoping for 2021? 

“At a personal level, I think 2021 is going to be a hard year.  On top of it being an LTP year (which happens once every three years), there is also the Government Three Waters reforms to work through with the community.  

“At some stage next year we will all have to decide whether our council will hand over its water assets to a larger (possibly encompassing almost the whole South Island) entity.  

“What the process will look like and how it will all work is still being worked through but we are really faced with the devil’s alternative as it stands at the moment.  

“There is going to be a huge amount of work in communicating the complexities of this to the public so an informed decision can be made.  

“For the broader community, I hope we remain in the good shape we are in with the incredibly bleak economic predictions we were faced yet remaining at bay.”

What is your message to others after this year, and looking forward to next? 

“Be grateful.  As a district and a nation, we dodged a bullet this year.  We didn’t go unscathed but nor were we hit right between the eyes by it like a lot of the rest of the world.  

“2021 isn’t going to be easy; the implications of the biggest world shake up since 1945 don’t just disappear at midnight on the 31st.  

“But we here in Central are just so lucky and we need to remember that.  I was at the movies this week and a person (I won’t name names) who has spent most of his year in Britain and Europe told the audience that they were amongst only a handful of people in the world (certainly in the western world) sitting together watching a movie at that time because most other places are back in lockdown.  

“What he said was heartfelt and entirely true, and living here in our bubble of normality, so easy to forget.”