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Council meeting · 23 February 2026

First Disability Advisory Committee meeting and election as Your Library Deputy Chair

2 min 14 s · Item 5, Reports by Councillors · Reported as ward councillor

0:001:56:47

This report runs from 10:32 to 12:46 of a 1 h 57 min meeting. Watch the full meeting on the council webcast.

Summary

I reported on my first meeting of the Knox Disability Advisory Committee, where we discussed the local law review, event permits and building access and inclusion principles into everything Council does. I also attended the Your Library board meeting with the Mayor, where I was elected Deputy Chair for this year, and heard how well Your Library ranks on visits, memberships, borrowings and downloads.

Transcript

Edited from the meeting's auto-generated captions.

Thank you, Mayor. I attended my first meeting of the Knox Disability Advisory Committee, KDAC as we know it, on Tuesday, the 3rd of February. I noted Councillor Pearce is one of the outgoing councillors from that committee, and I thank Councillor Pearce again for making way for me on KDAC this year, because it's a real passion area of mine.

And it was great to meet the committee, introduce myself to the committee members, and to hear their lived experiences and professional and personal connection with all things disability and access and inclusion. And I note Councillor Baker, and thank her as my fellow committee member of KDAC from Council, who's chairing the committee again this year. We talked about the local law review and event permits, and really building access and inclusion principles into everything Council does. So a really great group of people around the table, and I look forward to having an impact at KDAC this year.

Last Thursday, the 19th of February, with the Mayor, Councillor Kennett, we attended the Your Library board meeting. I was very humbled to be elected Deputy Chair of Your Library for this year. I accepted the nomination with hope to provide continuity and input for the Your Library board for some time to come.

We talked a little bit about the upcoming annual budget. And it was really interesting to see some numbers, just how well Your Library ranks in terms of visits and memberships and active borrowings and downloads. Number one in terms of several metrics. Not the biggest library group, but they're top of the leaderboard in terms of many of the metrics that we use to measure our library and services. So well done, Your Library, and I look forward to getting stuck into the work of the board this year.

Plenty of other things. I note the correspondence that others had relating to a couple of the agenda items tonight, and I'll submit a report with the rest of the happenings from Tirhatuan Ward this month. Thank you.