Our New Year Resolutions.

Edinburgh Castle & our Hogmanay party.

In Scotland we do not celebrate the coming of the New Year we celebrate the passing of the Old Year. Our Hogmanay, which is also celebrated on the 31^st December, is quite probably a Norse and Gaelic fusion that originally celebrated the winter solstice.

Our modern version allows for a rather delightful custom of “first-footing” where, just after midnight, we would visit our neighbours, bringing them a lump of coal for their fire, whisky to warm them up and, depending on where you live, some food in the form of a type of rich fruit cake (or black bun) or even the gift of the odd pickled herring!

Auld Lang Syne lip syncing begins.

It is at this time of year, when the bells are struck at mid-night that we all stand on wobbly, booze soaked legs, we link our arms together in one big circle and sing one of Scotland’s most famous poems “Auld Lang Syne”, penned by none other than Robert Burns. This is one of those songs that we all know the chorus to but as for the other words and verses they are lost in a hail strum of slurred humming and pretend voice syncing that would do our modern day pop stars proud.

Like that other tradition, we Scots do however make the odd New Year resolution, mostly around having a healthier life style for the year ahead. We do go out of our way to make such commitments but the lure of one of our culinary contributions to world food, the deep fried mars bar, comes a calling after the Hogmanay hangover and usually within 24 hours the healthier resolution has been kicked into touch.

So what should we look for when we are considering Waterford’s New Year resolutions?

Culinary heart attack in a box!

I do hope that those with both power and influence for Waterford will have tangible 2016 New Year resolutions that will essentially deliver. For so many years we have missed out on investment whilst other neighbouring counties have benefited from so many New Year promises.

As the Government is currently awash with lots of extra tax revenue, and influencers are stuffing their own constituency ballot boxes with this extra cash, I would ask for €15 million to invest in UHW’s cardiology unit. This will allow the speedy completion of the unit and sufficient funding to run the service for the next 3, 4 or 5 years.

Another €20 million to finally deliver and create a University for Waterford and the South East with all the bells and whistles needed to attract significant research funding. Not a fudged pressure delivered hotchpotch multi-campus minestrone soup of an organisation, as is being proposed, but a REAL University based and administered in Waterford City that will clearly benefit the economic future of the entire South East.

A further €25 million to develop our North Quay, the railway station and the port to drive a whole new tourism market for Waterford and the South East. If we could develop these three vital pieces of the City’s infrastructure we could place Waterford City at the very heart of the Ireland’s Ancient East tourism project and make Waterford City the 3 or 4 night destination stop that would be the anchor for every tourist wishing to explore this Ancient East region.

Happy Hogmanay!

Only circa €60 million, and not a long term loan, would go a long way to redressing the lack of focused investment in Waterford and the South East. We are at the moment seeing our hospital, our docks/port and our third level education establishment being ever so slowly dismantled and systematically taken away from us. If we are not careful these essential pieces of infrastructure will soon disappear for good.

If we do not have strong political and public representation fighting for every Euro of the Government investment pie we will remain the City that always had concrete New Year resolutions that were never actually delivered.

We do not want to be eating deep fried Mars Bars early next year.

Happy Hogmanay!

The countdown is well and truly on!

A Countdown conundrum!

A little over one week to C-Day and joy of joys the City Centre, last weekend, had a steady flow of people alternating between the spine of the City, the Barronstrand Street, John Robert’s Square, Broad Street, Michael Street and Applemarket axis, and the Viking Triangle area, with a few popping up the hill to take in the winter offerings in and around Ballybricken.

I believe that the whole offering last Sunday was exceptional and after an unspeakable spell of very bad weather many people and many visitors took respite after storm Desmond, and committed to going out prior to the next storm Eva arriving, to come into the City Centre and sample Waterford at Christmas.

2015 is in fact my fifteenth Christmas in Waterford and over these last fifteen years I have witnessed the City grow in stature as a destination for Christmas shoppers. These much needed and very welcomed shoppers are the lifeblood of many of our businesses and the festive period is probably one of the few times of the year where a profit can actually be made.

Many of our businesses can be operating on margins as low as 5% and that means the tills need to ring at an ever faster pace in order to make enough margin to see businesses through the barren and lean months of January and February that follow the flurry of Christmas activity.

There was much on offer on Sunday 13^th December and one of the highlights had to be the Winter Wonderbands competition that saw the City of Waterford Brass lift the inaugural Waterford Business Group sponsored trophy.

Jubilant City of Waterford Brass.

The concept saw three of our City’s finest, the City of Waterford Brass, De La Salle Scouts Pipe Band and the Thomas Francis Meagher Fife and Drum Band, compete across three performance areas located in Broad Street, Applemarket and the Bishop’s Palace. The whole event was supported by WLR FM’s outside broadcast unit and a running update was given live on air throughout the afternoon.

At just after 3pm the winners were announced and after much whooping and hollering interviews with the judges and band members took place live on air. This event will return in 2016 with perhaps as many as ten competing bands and in 2017 the whole event has the potential to become a national event taking in both a Saturday and a Sunday.

Winter Wonderbands was part of a promoted “Shop Local Sunday” commitment and it gave those who ventured into the City Centre something a little bit extra special and it also gave three of our City bands the opportunity to showcase themselves to a whole new market audience.

The reaction to the competition was priceless. With mums, dads, kids, and grandparents all stopping to sing, tap their feet, dance and jump around with excitement as one after another our favourite Christmas tunes were energetically played by all the band members concerned. Whilst it is very difficult to solely judge three very different bands one of the criteria for judging was audience participation and all three bands made a monumental effort to get their audience involved.

Calvin's logic.

A very high bar has now been set as many visitors to the City thought that this type of activity was the norm for Waterford at Christmas. I have no doubt that many will have left Waterford last weekend wishing they lived here and after what was on offer who can blame them for thinking that way.

It often takes an “outsider’s eyes” to remind us just what we have to offer and so many visitors to Waterford see a wonderful compact medieval City that is both big enough and yet small enough to enjoy.

Our challenge will be to continue that offering far beyond C-Day and ensure our City grows and expends at a rapid pace. The solid foundations are there we just need to give a few people a gentile New Year kick in the ass to remind them what is needed. 

Waterford cannot just be for Christmas!

As we head inextricably towards Christmas Day it was great to see the City Centre so busy last weekend, despite the best efforts of storm Desmond. It has been quite clear for some time now that our traditional Waterford shopping days are now Thursday, Friday and Saturday and of course Sunday, probably being the busiest shopping day due to the unlimited FREE car parking we can all avail of.

It is great to see these increased footfall numbers that our City Centre retailers so badly need and of course the Winterval Festival and the Waterford Business Group’s “Shop Local Sunday”, the 13^th December, and the Winter Wonderbands competition, Sunday 13^th December, will all help to keep those footfall numbers UP!

What about after this Festive period?

Teresa Mannion taking on storm Desmond!

The fact is that Waterford businesses need to have continuous support to help keep these SME’s in business. To put it bluntly there has to be money coming across the counter in order for businesses to employ staff, pay commercial rates, pay insurance premiums, pay utility bills, pay vat, pay revenue etc. The cost of being in business is very high and enormously challenging and many of the businesses we love and support are in fact operating at tiny margins, some as low as 5%.

These tiny margins make it extraordinarily challenging to absorb any increased business costs and therefore the only way for many of these businesses to survive and grow is to see a reduction in business costs coupled with significant increases in footfall numbers across the City and County.

However, this message I fear is being loss on so many of those that represent us.

My journalistic colleagues and I do not for one moment class myself as one of our City’s journalist (truth is I just always wanted an excuse to say that phrase), have indicated to me that at the Councils recent “behind closed doors budget meetings” a cohort of Councillors had advocated an INCREASE in commercial rates and an INCREASE in City Centre car parking charges. Perhaps proof that these sources were correct was the fact that there was also a proposal to implement car parking charges in Dunmore East, which was subsequently defeated.

In the end what we ended up with, after I hope was some robust lobbying, was no rates and no car parking increases but a 20% commercial rates charge on empty shops and empty premises for 2016 and beyond.

The fact that such increases were even considered shows just how out of touch some of our Councillors are with the realities of being in business in the City and County. Perhaps these Councillors should identify themselves and explain to us their justification as to why they considered those aforementioned increases appropriate to the many businesses across the City and County.

I fear now that the new “empty building” commercial rates charge may in fact create a big hairy retail monster for the City Centre. If distressed property owners are in reality being forced to rent out their properties, you have to ask yourself just what type of retailer will fill such premises at what can only be very low rental prices.

Far from offering a carrot to getting premises let are we not in danger of filling our City and County with the very retailers that will drive footfall elsewhere, where there is better choice and a better retail mix?

To generate much needed increased footfall and the higher spend that will eventually attract new retailers to the City Centre, the very retailers that my daughter keeps harping on about, we need to create a holistic approach that gives out far more carrots and does less beating with a stick.

We are not there just yet and in order to get there we need more direct lobbying by the very people who understand the dynamics of being in business in Waterford.

Time to speak the truth even if your voice shakes.

Our chance to make a land grab!

"We can use these & fill them with the North Quay rubble."

My recent article, published in the Waterford Today, on the North Quay’s demolition has certainly sparked much debate around the lack of removal of the rubble and a number of people have been in touch stating that they were led to believe that the whole site would be left “clean and clear” once the demolition had taken place.

The potential for huge piles of rubble, which we could all be staring at for months on end, got me thinking about a creative way WE could help to shift said rubble as a cost neutral exercise for Council. That is assuming that the rubble will not be left in architecturally pleasing piles that we are told resemble the pyramids of Giza.

It is only a matter of time before we get the call to arms, which will be broadcast loud and clear on Deise AM, for the people of Waterford to get involved in helping shift the rubble as no extra money could be found in the Council’s 2016 budget to do this on our behalf.

I can just imagine thousands of people from Waterford marching across Rice Bridge and visiting the North Quays wearing overly baggy trousers and, rather strangely, being observed placing large quantities of the rubble into their trouser pockets. In a similar manner to Messer McQueen, Gardner, Pleasance and Attenborough in The Great Escape and of course Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption.

How long will it take to build a new wall?

Having secretly filled hidden jute sacks inside their baggy trouser legs the people of Waterford would head off in the direction of Ferrybank and the Port where they would deposit the rubble along Minister Coffey’s proposed new boundary line.

Over a period of months the North Quay would be rid of the rubble and a new city wall would have appeared, grabbing the very land that Kilkenny Councillors are incredulously protecting. An area that, until now, Kilkenny Council seem to have had no interest in until they heard the sound of commercial rates income coming from the expansion of the IDA site at the Port of Waterford.

Literally over night Waterford City would have expanded and we would suddenly, for once and for all, have incorporated Ferrybank and the Port of Waterford under the control of Waterford Council. There would be no need for any more committee discussions as the people of Waterford would have taken the bulls by the horns, bypassed all the political rhetoric and done what should have be done years ago.

The added bonus would be that our history of unconquerable walls is good, “Urbs Intacta Manet”, and once we secured the land grab it would be impossible for Kilkenny to take it back.

With such large quantities of stone and rubble needing to be moved we could also restart the old jute factory and for a short window of opportunity someone could create a wee cottage industry to supply the small jute sacks ideally sized to perfectly fit inside a trouser leg. Eventually the old jute factory could be turned into a real working museum along the lines of Verdant Mills in Dundee.

A hot topic on both sides of the River Suir.

The above is of course fantasy and the ramblings of an over active mind but the sentiment and meaning are real.

If Waterford City and County are to compete with our neighbouring counties and towns then we really need to look to the future with added aggression and ambition.

The North Quay must not become an eyesore for our citizens and the City’s 2016 visitors. It was hard enough to keep positive when the works on the South Quay were taking place and trying to constantly explain that “2011 Tall Ships are coming back” banner was beyond a joke!

Optics is everything. Incorporating Ferrybank and the Port into the City will make us a better place to invest in and, more significantly, we will be able to control our shop window to the City, which at the moment is controlled by Kilkenny Council. 

Now where is the sense in that!