Economy

Andy Foster — Vote #1 for Council

ONSLOW-WESTERN

Economy and Rates

We’ve diversified our economy in areas like areas like IT, earthquake engineering, film, and Wellingtonians are selling their skills by consulting overseas while choosing to live in Wellington. Education is an important part of our economy. We are well and truly on the tourism map, and Wellington now gets rave reviews from international writers. We’ve quietly won back some major corporates, and of course the Government is a huge player.

What’s Council’s role ?

In my view we have to be careful to be assisting, and creating the environment for business to flourish in rather than in intervening so that Council can be seen to be doing something.

Our appropriate roles include:

· Providing quality infrastructure. Our infrastructure is in generally very good shape, and has very good asset management plans looking forward. We’ve aimed to include maintenance and replacement of old assets in our budgets so we are well placed to avoid the problems faced by some Councils which face very large deferred maintenance.

· Maintain affordable rates

· Continuing to improve Wellington as a great place to live. I know a huge number of examples of people deciding Wellington is where they choose to live. That does affect corporate decisions about locating part, or sometimes all their workforce.

· Providing infrastructure, support and venues for events. We do that incredibly well. Other cities and regions are copying what we’ve been doing and it is now a very competitive area, but we are still doing a great job as a city and region. We couldn’t do that without Wellingtonians being such fantastic supporters of the arts, sporting events etc. Well done !

· Working co-operatively with all the councils of the region. Let’s face it, on the international stage we are a tiny area, even as a region. It’s crucial that we work together. After 3 years of work we have an agreed Wellington Regional Strategy. Mayor Kerry Prendergast and myself represented Council at the regular meetings to receive a huge amount of information, and thrash out a vision and direction, and identify opportunities for the region. There was a huge amount of input from consultation and from business and community leaders.

· Facilitation – such as bringing together clusters like earthquake engineering, IT etc.

· Relationship development with businesses and key sectors like Education so we understand their needs and can help to meet them. One important example is in businesses search for appropriate accommodation. Often Council has a better picture of what is going on.

· Support for tourism development. Positively Wellington Tourism is recognised as the best regional tourism organisation in the country, and the team’s marketing efforts have been a vital component in our city becoming recognised as a tourism destination. 10 years ago we weren’t even on the radar screen. We are now frequently rated among the top ‘cool’ cities in the world by leading travel publications.

· Of course we need product to promote. Council support has been critical to the development of Karori Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is a conservation, education, and research facility with significant tourism potential. The proposed Marine Education Centre will fulfil a similar role on the South Coast. There are other exciting proposals in the wind. I’ve been keen for some time to promote Wellington’s ecotourism potential. We do that best by talking about ‘clusters’ of attractions. A natural cluster involving Karori Sanctuary, Otari-Wilton’s Bush, Botanic Gardens, Green Belts, day and overnight walkways, Makara Peak mountain bike park, the Zoo, Te Papa is a pretty attractive package. A South Coast package would involve the Marine Education Centre, F69 diving attraction, Marine Reserve, and coastal walkway.

For further information about Rates click here.

Our Economy

Wellington’s economy has done pretty well in the last few years. We’ve had to reinvent our economy with the loss of many major corporates over the years. However the number of people employed in the CBD has risen from 108,000 in 2001 to 132,000 in 2006.

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