Community Energy Whāingaroa re-announced themselves at the Raglan Community Board meeting this week. They’re on a mission to eliminate energy hardship, reduce carbon emissions and increase climate change resilience in our community and will be using locally generated electricity and peer to peer technology to undercut the big players and help out people in need in our community.
They’ll be getting the Marae and Community House to nominate households in need of support and working with the Community Energy Network who have developed the peer to peer technology to use around NZ.
Local Neil Darwin has also been crucial to the project developing software to make use of Nissan Leaf batteries to store electricity - despite a lack of help from Nissan themselves.
Rick Thorpe from the Xtreme Zero Waste Trust was speaking to the board and said that while the trust was supporting the project at the moment it would likely become its own organisation in the future.
Other things discussed at the Community Board meeting this week include further development of the local Civil Defense plan, the current consultation about freedom camping and also that staffing problems continue to plague the council. With only 2 staff members left in the roading team the board was asked to only contact them if an issue was urgent.
Council is working on hiring more staff but with another council reporting that a recent rise in salary rates in the private sector is making it hard for all councils to retain staff it seems likely that this issue will be a problem for some time. The solid waste team is another cause for concern with a crucial staff member about to retire.
In local sport the Whaingaroa Whai Women’s rugby league team is playing their 4th game of the season in Te Awamutu on Saturday. They got their first victory in their last match against Taniwharau and this weekend will be taking on the Te Awamutu Firehawks at 2pm at the TA sports field.
Meanwhile the Roosters Football team are looking for a rare victory this weekend taking on the Jazz raptors at 11am on Sunday at Kahikatea Park in the Tron.