From the Mayor

Martin Connelly

I feel as if this is the first of these articles that I have written when the weather was fine. The recent better weather lets me take longer walks with Carlos, and to finally confront the garden.

Just as the good weather seemed to be settling in, the bad weather returned with a vengeance last weekend with truly frightening winds closing the hill road and also doing a lot of damage. I am told we should expect much more windy weather before the spring is over. Please take precautions.

People sometimes ask me how does the council support economic activity in the district? The short answer is that we help to fund Destination Wairarapa and the Wairarapa Economic Development Strategy. Both organisations are collaborating at the present time to help us reap the benefits of having become a Dark Sky Reserve.

A recent event that the Council supported was the Wairarapa Rebel Business School. The Rebel Business School supports regional economic growth across Aotearoa. It does this by providing free entrepreneurial training courses to (primarily) young people wanting to start their own business. The recent Wairarapa Business School was the first time such a course has been run locally, and it was very well attended. By the end of the course many attendees had developed their business plans and others were implementing their business ideas.

Alongside initiatives such as this, a lot of what a council does day in and day out also supports the local economy. Roads are fundamental to most businesses, as are many other council services. Importantly, enabling new people to come and live and do business in the district also supports economic activity.

I thought readers might be interested to know that over the past year the Council has issued 154 permits for new buildings. House sales in the district have also continued at levels similar to last year, although at lower average prices than last year. Again, this is a sign that people continue to have confidence in the district as an attractive place to live and work.

Through the Mayor’s Taskforce for Jobs (MTFJ), your Council accepts a role to help get young people into sustainable employment. And an exciting development I can report is that the three local councils have combined their MTFJ resources to provide a single Wairarapa-wide programme. Our programme will be delivered by the Wairarapa REAP. Getting a regional programme up and running to help young people at risk of under-employment has been a high priority for me.

The council is currently consulting residents on how rates are determined for the next six years. This exercise does not determine the overall amount of rates the council needs to raise, but it determines how much different groups of residents pay in relationship to other groups. For example, commercial ratepayers are traditionally charged higher rates than residential ratepayers.

This is the opportunity for you to tell the council whether you think current arrangements, including the different rates charged to different types of ratepayers, are fair or whether they can be improved.

One part of the consultation may interest many who live in and around Martinborough. And that is the question asking whether dwellings used for short-stay accommodation (such as Airbnb, or Bookabach) should be rated to help pay for the council’s contribution to economic development. 

At present commercial and industrial properties pay an economic development rate.

Much short stay accommodation is outside the commercial area and is not, therefore, paying to support tourism promotion. Let us know what you think please.