More Manurewa residents are making a splash in the area’s pools and hitting the leisure centre.
Manurewa Local Board chair Glenn Murphy says it’s great news because one of the board’s main aims is having quality facilities available, and ensuring residents use them.
“Our pools and leisure centres are a central part of our community and we saw how critical they are when Manu Tukutuku and Manurewa Leisure Centre were both called into use as Civil Defence Centres during the storms.”
“Though we have no interest in them being places you only go to in an emergency, we prefer they become part of the everyday lives of our people, so seeing use climbing is excellent.”
Receiving a performance report for the last quarter, which ended on 31 March, the board noted underspending in three budget lines that enabled $33,945 to be redirected to community grants.
“These reports allow us to check where we are at and provide a useful snapshot of our area,” Murphy says.
“That means we can check what is working well at a project level but also on the ground. For instance, we have a new yoga programme developed with our seniors, and we can see it’s been fully-booked, and we can see a new co-working space - South Space, is being used.”
Murphy says highlights from programmes at Te Pātaka Kōrero o Manurewa and Te Pātaka Kōrero o Waimāhia included free seminars for seniors, neighbours day and World of Cultures events, and a session called Brain Play that taught children how to use 3D printing software.
“The days when libraries were just where you went to borrow a book are long gone and now our facilities in Manurewa and Clendon are offering a huge range of services to our people.”
While the storm hit hard and impacted the board's plans, almost 30 activations were still successfully delivered. Manurewa Leisure Centre saw attendance at its programmes return to pre-Covid levels, and holiday programmes all grew.
At Tōtara Park, pool use jumped 20 per cent on the previous year, and Manurewa Pool and Leisure Centre saw a 43 per cent increase in visits, more than 70,000 visits in the quarter.
“The board continued to subsidise pool entry fees during the quarter, benefitting almost 3,000 over 65s, almost 4,000 adults supervising children, and 100 or so people with disabilities. That’s money we believe is well-spent,” Murphy says.
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