Letter To Manakau Friday, 4 December 2009

Graffiti

As part of our focus on being clean, tidy and proud, Manukau City has been leading the way in graffiti legislation development and graffiti management.

I was asked to chair an advisory committee to oversee the development of "STOP"- Stop Tagging Our Place - strategy to assist councils and communities to address graffiti issues around the country.  The advisory committee is made up of representatives from organisations across the country and we are due to receive the first annual report on the progress which has been made.   

Central government provided $6 million to fund anti-graffiti measures.  I know how well we are doing and have heard from others involved around the Auckland region that they are making good progress and I'm determined that Manukau will continue to head in the right direction with regards to addressing an issue that is important to our communities.

For many years, Manukau has advocated for the quick removal of graffiti in order to effectively control the problem. While we have achieved this goal in public premises and residential areas, there have been some challenges regarding private owned commercial properties and utility facilities.

Last year we set up a Mayor's Taskforce On Graffiti to address the graffiti issue on these premises. To date, around 30 small private businesses have established partnership with the Council to keep their premises graffiti free.  I also wrote to different service companies earlier this year and held numerous discussions with them.  

Now I am happy to tell you that we have reached an agreement with Vector. Any graffiti marks on Vector facilities will be removed within 24 hours by the Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust. Other providers could follow and I will continue to advocate for that. 

Community Events

I have attended a number of sod turnings in recent months and there will be more over the next year.  We are probably seeing more progress in terms of infrastructure development in our community at this time, than any other time in the city's history.

The Deputy Mayor, Councillor Gary Troup, members of the Papatoetoe Community Board and the new Papatoetoe Sports Trust joined me at the sod turning for the new sports facility in Papatoetoe.  It was a pleasure to get the first opportunity to operate a digger.

This is a fabulous project bringing together most of the sporting clubs in and around the Papatoetoe recreation centre into a single sporting facility and meeting place. 

Sports clubs have been extraordinarily cooperative and collaborative in this matter and even though we are still dealing with a few issues, it doesn't take away from the day of celebration for the commencement of work on this new facility.  Like other projects twe are working on, we will be aiming to deliver this one on time. 

Travel

There has been quite a bit of discussion in recent months relating to parliamentary travel with some MPs being grilled over their travel plans.  This year I went on my first major overseas travel as the Mayor of our city when I led a business delegation to Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa, which proved to be very successful. 

Next year, I have been invited to visit Utsunomiya in Japan. 

Utsunomiya is our only sister city and we have had a relationship for 27 years.  In the initial years of the relationship, much of the focus was on cultural and social exchanges designed to build understanding, friendship, and co-operation between our two cities and our two nations.  In that regard, the relationship was highly successful and around 10,000 people from both cities have been involved over the years. We still arrange school visits to Utsunomiya and host students from Utsunomiya each year.

In recent years sister city relationships have changed significantly in their focus with a much stronger emphasis on potential economic gains and opening up of trade and business opportunities.  This has never really been the focus of our sister city arrangement with Utsunomiya and I certainly would have been encouraging an economic direction if our city was continuing its civic life. 

I have decided to accept the invitation of the Mayor, the council and leaders of the Utsunomiya council to visit in February next year.

The Council has approved the travel, which will include my wife Shan.  We will be hosted by the Mayor and the Mayoress, and the Deputy Mayor, Deputy Mayoress of our sister city and we will be away for five days.  On election as Mayor I said I would inform the community if I was to travel, as a representative of our city.  I fully intend to report in depth about this visit, on my return.

Have a good week.
 

Len Brown

Mayor of Manukau

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