Wednesday 13 May 2009 – Issue 70

In this update:

Street workers | Mayoral Town Centre Makeovers| Mayor on the Chair| Minnie Mariu

Street workers on Hunters Corner

Two recent issues have highlighted a matter of critical importance for our community - that being our community pride.  The issue of the continuing challenge with the street workers in Hunter's Corner has been subject of a lot of media coverage recently. 

The community's view on this matter – which I acknowledge is tinged by a position of the morality of the issue - is overwhelmingly based on Papatoetoe residents' sense of pride, or the loss of pride for the Hunter's Corner they once knew and loved.  As a council we are aware of the work needed to harness our community's pride and reflect this in our town centres so we are supportive of the work of our passionate local residents and understand where they're coming from.

It's the reason why we are going to speak to Prime Minister John Key and his government, as we work towards an amendment to the Prostitutes Law Reform Act to ban street workers from operating on our residential streets. 

I appreciate that to achieve this will be a challenge and will necessitate a significant debate in the chambers but I'm confident that Parliament as a whole understands the issue of the impact at the coalface, of this sort of activity in our community which is difficult for our people to accommodate within the framework of driving our communities forward with pride.

As a final comment I want to commend the work of area commander Bruce Bird and his team.  They are sitting between a rock and a hard place. However, they have worked hard to keep a balance in recent times, working with the prostitutes operating in and around Sutton Crescent, and have moved them (with their co-operation) into a specifically commercial area of Hunters Corner for now,  taking the pressure off the residents of Sutton Crescent.  It's important that we continue to work together to resolve the issues we face in a responsible way to enable all those involved to get on with their lives.

Mayoral town centre makeover

The second issue of pride relates to the town centres across our community.  I've increasingly been under the perception that some of the centres lacked the tidiness, the commercial vitality and energy they once had.  I'm thinking particularly of town centres such as Mangere, old Papatoetoe, Hunters Corner, Dawson Rd and Manurewa.  With our council, I am working towards a Mayoral makeover project for a number of our older town centres which are in need of re-investment. These makeovers will initially encourage cleaning and re-painting the town centres. We have already had tremendous buy-in from the commercial sector as we take them around each of the town centres.  There is a sense of partnership between the community, tenants, owners and our council in this project which bodes well for a positive future for these centres. Clean, tidy and proud is a key pathway to making this happen.

Mayor on the Chair

There are a couple of new initiatives we are rolling out in the next week or two. One is with this Letter and the other in the community. I've had a great time since becoming Mayor, at Mayoral meetings throughout the community and now I want to take these meetings to a more direct one-on-one level.  I enjoy the feedback I get from these newsletters and through my facebook page, so I'm going to take a leaf out of Gary Moore's book (he was a long time mayor of Christchurch).   I'm going to start a weekly round of 'Mayor on the Chair' meetings out in the community every Friday between 12pm and 1pm.  I'm going to be in one of the town centres sitting on a chair and available for people to come and say hello and raise issues of concern with me. 

Minnie Mariu

Secondly, with our letters to Manukau every week, I'm going to acknowledge one of our community heroes. 

 I meet hundreds of people, and many of our communities are carrying out great work without acknowledgment from the wider public.  One of them is Minnie Mariu, a resident of Otara, in the Wymondley area for 42 years.

 Her great passion in life is looking after her local neighbourhood park. She's done some amazing things in her time, including her current role of Park guardian and working together with council parks officers, keeping an eye on the park.  Minnie is an amazing person with wonderful spirit and I want to acknowledge her work.  We are all indebted to her for the love and care she has given back to her community.

Have a great week!

Len Brown

Mayor of Manukau

ends

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