My wife and I have had apartments in Ponsonby from Blake Street to Hopetoun to Heresford and now back to Blake and Prosford all this century, so I feel I’m qualified to comment on our dear suburb, especially as I’m the only elected person on the council who is a city dweller, given that our ward representative lives on Waiheke.

We all love the proximity to the city where I walk to work and the range of shops, cafes and bars along Ponsonby Road but a walk from top to bottom of our ‘main street' does reveal a disturbing number of vacant premises.

Indeed, we are going through mourning over the loss of Dida’s, our closest and favourite watering hole only to be followed by Blake Street Cafe three stories below our own apartment.

Of course there are still others like Chapel which is great place to while away time over a beer and a pizza just taking in the people wandering by, but there are definite signs of the tough economic environment out there.

At least cafes, bars and barbers aren’t competing with online sales but if we don’t shop locally we’ve only ourselves to blame if shops shut. You have to take your hat off to new entrants at times like this, like the new wine bar halfway up College Hill that is setting new trends. Good on them!

When spending in a sector drops, there have to be casualties in order that there are survivors. If dining spend drops by 40% for example then either 40% close so others survive or they all close as they can’t survive on the reduced spend. This is just basic economics and owner operators have always known this.

There are other heavily subsidised sectors that refuse to acknowledge this and an example of this is the live theatre sector, whose advocates claim that they are too important to be left to face the realities of a serious downturn. They do add flavour to a city but they are not essentials like bakers, plumbers, nurses and electricians for instance.

Ratepayers are all facing pressure and it is a foolish council that keeps raising rates to cover for everything that some citizens might want. Currently, council subsidises a string of live theatres all struggling to survive, yet there are calls for ratepayers to cough up to restore old theatres to add to the number of infilled available seats in Auckland and this is not only during tough times but soon the Convention Centre will add another 2000 live theatre seats to what is already an oversupplied market.

Just pointing this out will probably upset some lovers of live theatre but if we don’t limit the number of venues that ratepayers support, then they will all fail along with many upset struggling ratepayers who don’t go to these even in the best of times.

Balancing the books is never easy managing the competing pressures of needs and wants of a community and ratepayers should be wary of those calling for the delivery of everything at a time when even the Government is battling cost pressures and telling councils to stick to basics of pipes, roads, buses, drains and rubbish.

Just saying! Right now we need more income into our city and that means making it easier for tourists to visit for example, yet the Government refuses to reciprocate visa-free entry to countries with big local populations like Chinese who can go to Thailand visa free now.

You will all be asked for your views on what many in the accommodation industry want which is a 2.5% surcharge on overnight stays to build up a fund to pay for big events which fill the hotels, as council doesn’t want to rate struggling households to fill flash hotels, but the Government doesn’t like this either.

This year will be a challenge, so let’s celebrate what we’ve got here in Ponsonby and support it. (Wayne Brown) 

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Mayor.Wayne.Brown@Aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

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