It helps to have broad shoulders when you are elected to public office.

As a Councillor, you must have time, energy and passion for the district. In making decisions that affect the lives of residents, you also need to balance a range of views and needs, and consider things like affordability, sustainability and wellbeing. So it helps to have an inquiring mind too.

However, as this year is a local body election year, I feel that good people might hesitate to put their hand up for council because of the increasing vitriol of keyboard warriors. Perhaps now is the time for those warriors to stand themselves!

There’s a raft of information about what constitutes harmful digital communications, but having been the subject of some myself, I would like to offer my thoughts to those who attack from behind the safety of the screen: Before you press the send button, please re-read and think about what you are saying to that person, or organisation that you are about to attack.

Is what you are about to post true? Will it affect that person or group’s wellbeing? Do you know the full story, or the facts and figures? What is your personal agenda?
I invite you to put yourself in your victim’s shoes. How would you feel?

And would you be willing to follow words with action, and stand yourself for public election?

While the job can be rewarding, it’s not as easy as it first may appear. As councillors we have to balance up a wide range of views, needs and wants, against what’s affordable, practical and sustainable, and determine how it will affect the wellbeing of our district.

Behind the scenes, there are rules and regulations we have to abide by, and we are accountable to regional or central Government. It’s a complex system and as councillors we spend many hours reading, visiting, and going through facts, before we debate the issues around the council table. This is our job and we are expected to ask the hard questions, both for and against, before any decision is made.

You personally may not like the decision, but at the end of the day we are here to represent the whole district, not sections of it.

We all want the Ashburton district to be a great place to work, live and play. Yes, we should hold our elected members accountable, but we need to encourage good people to put their hand up for our local elections, without fear of being torn down.