Infrastructure Strategy Our financial planning is another way we will ensure we can recover as quickly as An infrastructure strategy needs to answer three basic questions: possible from emergency events. Ensuring we have reserves, flexible capital programmes and insurance to meet the expected losses. 1. What are the significant infrastructure challenges over the next 30 years? Financial implications 2. What are the main options for resolving those challenges and which of these is This graph provides an overall picture of the proposed capital and operating Marlborough District Council’s preferred option? expenditure for our infrastructure over the next 30 years. 3. What will it cost, and what does that mean for rates and debt? In order to fully recognise the challenges faced by the region it is necessary to describe what Marlborough will look like in 30 years’ time; consider the aspirations of the community and what we need to do differently to ensure infrastructure will still be meeting the needs of the people who will live here in 2048 and beyond. For example, we know the size and composition of the New Zealand population will be quite different. Climate change is almost certain to affect our daily lives. The massive advances of computer technology and the Internet will continue to change the way we work and live. These questions will be answered in the three parts of this strategy outlined below. Part One – Context, opportunities and key challenges In this section Marlborough’s unique combination of people, economy and environment are examined. The region is a wonderful place to live and work. The Council aims to enhance and develop the potential of the region to ensure the community is prosperous, healthy and educated; the lifestyle is attractive; the natural environment is protected and enriched and society is resilient to the inevitable challenges of the future. However we must consider recent changes to lifestyle, technology and the Introduction environment and identify trends that can be projected forward to try to understand what the region will look like in 30 years’ time. Why infrastructure matters The economic environment will change as businesses prosper or decline. New We often take for granted the infrastructure we rely on for the very basics of everyday employment opportunities will be created and different work patterns will emerge. life — clean water from the tap, a readily available flushing toilet and a safe drive to Workers and their families will move in and out of the region in response to the work or school. We tend not to think about how infrastructure works unless something opportunities. There will be many more elderly people who may, or may not, have goes wrong — roads are closed through land slips, homes or businesses are flooded, retired from the workforce. or there is a public health scare from contaminated water. That’s when we realise how essential infrastructure is to all aspects of our lives. Both the ethnic composition and wealth distribution throughout the population will be different This strategy covers the infrastructure owned and operated by the Council that delivers the core services — roads, wastewater, water supply, rivers and land drainage, and Lifestyles will change as computer based technology matures. Automated vehicles, urban stormwater drainage. Community facilities have also been included as they are Artificial Intelligence, 3D printers and robotics manufacture, and remote control through important part of the fabric of the community the ‘internet of things’ will almost certainly become commonplace. 2018-2028 Long Term Plan Page 170