Most voting-age residents of the Ashburton District would have received a letter from the Electoral Commission in the past month reminding them about voting in the local elections this October.

Mayor Neil Brown is stepping down, after 21 years on Council, and typically when an incumbent mayor chooses to leave there’s always more interest in these elections.

If you want to have your say on who represents you around the Council table, then it’s important you enrol, or update your enrolment details if you have shifted, so that you can vote.

If your details are correct in the Electoral Commission’s letter, then you don’t need to do anything. If not, update your details and return the form in the reply paid envelope, or go online at vote.nz and update them that way.

There are about 28,500 eligible voters in the Ashburton district and so far almost 84 per cent of them are enrolled to vote.

Your elected officials (Councillors) make decisions to ensure the smooth management of services that are essential to communities – like safe drinking water, wastewater disposal, and well-maintained roads, as well as facilities like a public library, a sport and recreation centre, and an art gallery and museum.

It is a challenging and rewarding role and councillors constantly balance the needs of the district against the nice-to-haves. Council will be holding a candidate information evening on 2 July for those interested in running.

One big decision Council is making at the moment is the future delivery of its water services under the Government’s Local Water Done Well legislation.

When submissions closed on Sunday, there were over 200 responses and the vast majority supported Council’s proposed model of an in-house standalone business unit to keep delivering drinking water, wastewater and stormwater services.

While the current Council will make the decisions on the structure of our future water services, it will be up to the new Council to ensure those decisions are implemented seamlessly and water services continue to run well.