“We loves an auld report, we do!”

It has to be said, that we here in Waterford just love to get or download one “Auld report” after another, telling us just what we already know!

The problem being, that those with parish pump vested interests in looking after their own constituents do not unfortunately, operate out of Waterford City and County. The power brokers, as we know, live somewhere else in this wee green island on the edge of Europe.

The Net result, is that Waterford has a veritable national library of reports, gathering dust in filing cabinets, desk drawers and being used as doorstops. I even saw one last week in a pub, stopping a table from wobbling (didn’t really, but you get my drift)!!!

The latest WIT South East Economic Monitor was published on 1^st July. This is an excellent wee snapshot, of just where Waterford fares in relation to our nearest and dearest neighbouring counties. The report manages to dumb down the myriad of statistics out there, into something that we should all be reading. This simplified version of just how slowly our recovery is crawling along, makes good reading – provided of course that you are interested in this sort of thing!

Here’s the crux of such reports. We should ALL be interested in their content and their findings. It is after all not rocket science. Every man and his dog knows that regional diversity and investment has failed. There is NO regional strategy that has worked to the benefit of Waterford and the greater South East region. Yes, every single successive Government has talked about “A regional economic policy”, supported by a report that states “This will work!” But time and time again we have witnessed abject failure when it comes to Ireland’s South East and North West, for that matter.

Minister Coveney’s “Ireland 2040 – Our Plan” (I’ve lost count which number this report actually is) promises to double the size of Waterford City in the next number of years. Just how will this be done if you look at where we are starting from in 2017? The WIT report shows the huge enormity of the task in hand. “Fact”, our economic foundations are, at best, built on a very, very unstable model. To make Waterford great once again, we will have to do something very radical, to get away from the low cost, low wage model that we now seem to have accepted as the norm.

We have known for years that the proportionate spending in the City and County is way below national averages. You only have to ask an honest retailer “How is business?” and they will tell you that it is “VERY TOUGH trading in Waterford and has been for the last number of years!” Yes, there may be signs of economic recovery, but they are miniscule shoots and hard to spot for many a business.

Unfortunately, many, as always, will interpret the tough trading conditions in a completely different way. Come Waterford Council’s 2018 budget deliberations, just how many of our 32 Councillors will be advocating a Commercial Rates increase? I guarantee you that the CEO’s budget will be looking for a 2, 3, 4 or 5% increase on business rates. Just where will this additional money come from, when ALL the recent reports clearly show that it is just NOT there, to take out of our exceedingly fragile economy?

If you look hard enough there is good news tucked away in some recent reports though!

TravelMag.com has published a recent report on “The 20 most charming towns in Ireland”. Happily, I can report that Waterford gets a mention with both Dungarvan and Lismore making the grade and featuring in this top 20. “Dungarvan has managed to retain much of its traditional Irish charm” and “Writer Dervla Murphy, who was born in Lismore, continues the town’s literary tradition.”

So, we can find some good news stories, it is just that they are, by their nature, harder to find!

There is a plaque, in The Granville Hotel, commemorating the gift of a clock to Mayor Meagher. Upon receiving the present he reportedly stated “NOT another bloody clock!”

Lessons in history are never really learned, but often espoused. 

It is official – “Summer’s here!!!!”

The June Bank Holiday weekend is once again just around the corner. Boy does this come around quicker each year, or am I just getting older?

This of course means that we can forget for a few days at least, our woes, the political bickering of the FG leadership campaign, the effects of Brexit, the shenanigans surrounding the funding of our SDZ, our missing catheterization laboratory, our representatives’ empty promises and so on. As the City Centre will be buzzing with all manner of musical delights and a not insignificant hint of colour, over this June Bank Holiday weekend.

Returning to our streets will be the annual “City in Bloom”. A collaborative project between Waterford Council and Waterford Business Group (WBG), which has made a noteworthy contribution to additional Tidy Town points for the City. This, cross city project, has grown literally from few very small seeds, i.e. a handful of window boxes, to over 300 floral displays! In truth, there is no limit to this projects growth potential.

Start looking up at buildings and business shop fronts in the city centre, O’Connell Street, Ferrybank and Ballinakill Shopping Centre. Soon you will start to see the hint of the riotous colour which will soon engulf Waterford’s main footfall areas. City in Bloom will deliver once again for Waterford. In 2018, there could well be an exciting application to “Tidy Towns”, for Waterford City. Plans are afoot, to launch a bid as part of a “Bigger and better Tidy Towns”, supported by WBG. There is even consideration being given to the introduction of specific “Pollen bee friendly flowers!”, to make the application unique. The seeds have well and truly been sown (pardon the terrible pun)!

To launch the 2017 City in Bloom festival of flowers, there is an excellent competition for businesses to take part. WBG have teamed up with one of their members, Morris’s DIY on the Cork Road, to offer a €1000 voucher to the “Best 2017 improved shop/business front”. Some say that the best competitions are the simplest. All businesses have to do is post a before and after picture on www.facebook.com/WaterfordCityCentre/ Pictures must be posted before the August Bank Holiday and the winners will be announced in mid September. Businesses are allowed to post pictures retrospectively, provided the facelift/improvements took place from January 2017.

In conjunction with the launch of City in Bloom, Summer in the City makes a very welcome return to our city centre. On the main stage in John Robert’s Square we will see live acts performing across the opening weekend and right through, the hopefully long balmy summer weekends, to late August. The programme promises to deliver some age old favourite tribute acts, a smorgasbord of local singing talent and then there’s ArtBeat. This will once again showcase some of Waterford’s best emerging young talent. Bailey’s New Street will host ArtBeat every Saturday afternoon.

If we can now ask the weather gods to shine down upon us this summer, we are sure that all the programmes being launched this weekend, will help to get our city rocking, over the months of June, July and August.

There is much to look forward to around the wider county as well. You will find that there is a festival taking place somewhere, to undoubtedly suit any interest, hobby, or pastime. In terms of the bigger national and international picture, Redwater is flying the PR flag for our pretty, attractive coastal villages. We have already heard stories of people coming to the locations, where this drama has been filmed. Long may this continue and we hope to exponentially see more and more coming as the programme develops its fan base.

Our city should bloom during the Summer of 2017. As we get ready to sow some very strong roots for future growth and better news, in terms of our economic recovery.

There is much to look forward to on our horizon. In the meantime please do take time to look up at our wonderful quirky, higgledy piggledy buildings, sporting the colours of summer. Enjoy the free entertainment being provided across the city centre.

Above all “Live local, love local, shop local”.

Shhhh – have we all gone too quiet!!

I am quite sure that the powers that be, in their Dublin bastion, know that all political momentum has a lifespan!

Sooner or later the drive, enthusiasm and determination, initiated maybe by an awkward political question, will dissipate and in no time at all we will have moved on to another issue. This is undoubtedly what seems to be happening with our Waterford problems.

We have yet to secure our place, metaphorically speaking, as the awkward elephant in the corner of each and every parliamentary meeting room.

Our sheer revulsion at the shenanigans, currently going on in the Department of Health and the HSE, around the life and death issues in University Hospital Waterford, seem to be falling on too many deaf ears.

On this subject there is absolutely no doubt, that in the halls of power, we have no voice. The issue of a 90 minute drive to a safe operating table, is clearly being lost. All subject matters cardiac, for the South East, are seen purely as Waterford’s problems. There has been no expansion of the issue, to include the wider region.

I can guarantee that there have been very few column inches, if any, in the likes of Tipperary, Wexford, Gorey, Kilkenny... and so on. Dublin know this, from their TDs on the ground and as they feel no pressure, from their own electorate, they are doing very little to come up with the right solution. The whole matter around UHW needs to become THE political hot potato for the South East region. TDs across Waterford, Wexford, Tipperary etc need to fear for their cosy political armchairs in Dublin. They need to be aware that the very people who put them in the Dáil, want cardiac cover that will save their lives, if called upon.

 

There will be many who do not wish to see this issue become politicised. Well it has gone down that route and now, a truly regional voice needs to sing as one. Each and every TD across the region needs to act our behalf.

The stark reality is, that if you suffer a heart attack and have to be transported by an ambulance to Cork or Dublin, you have a 90 minute window or you die!

Maybe this is the message we need to get out to the people of Wexford, Tipperary, Kilkenny...and so on. A few years ago, when there was the very real threat of Rescue 117 being moved from Waterford, people power across the whole South East region secured the service at Waterford Airport. The message was simple – be rescued by the 117 crew, out of Waterford airport, or you drown!

People were galvanised by this messaging. It was stark, brutal, simple and to the point. Everyone understood what was needed and TDs feared for their seats, if the service was not secured for the South East region. People power won this argument as a regional and not a Waterford issue.

Are we seeing the very same weak messaging, regarding the University status for WIT/Carlow, the airport runway extension, the money for the SDZ on the north quay and so on? I would say “YES!” We have not yet stimulated the latent “People Power,” that argument is clearly simmering away underneath the surface.

How we unlock this, is the key to the region getting what every other region has, namely – adequate cardiac cover, a university, real regional investment, IDA driven FDI (not just visits) and real political influence.

We seem to be rather diffident when asking for what is ultimately, the same as every other citizen in Ireland. Do we not all pay the same taxes? Do we not all contribute equally to our societal environment? Well as far as I am aware we do.

We are very poor about shouting in a positive manner here in Waterford. We must be prepared to work as a region to deliver for everyone.

Sometimes in life, you have to be prepared to shout louder than those around you. To do this you need to be equipped to stand on the parapet. 

Good News - Winter is just around the corner!

The end of Autumn, according to the meteorological calendar, is the 30^th November, which also happens to be St.Andrew’s Day, the patron saint of Scotland. Though, we do not quite have such an energetically celebrated festival, as that afforded to St.Patrick, here in Ireland and around the world. In fact we do very little to celebrate this day and in terms of turning the world blue we do not hold a patch on you guys, when you, year after year manage to turn the whole world green on 17^th March. Maybe one day!

With Autumn over, wonderful Winter quickly follows suit and I must say, that this is one of my favourite times of the year. Getting out on a very crisp cold morning, for a brisk, effervescent walk, or short sharp ride in my lurid Lycra, does me the world of good. It clears my head, refreshing my mind about all the good things we have here on our doorstep, in wonderful Waterford.

So, whichever way you package it, there really is so much to look forward to this Winter.

Over the last week, we have seen a mini retail tsunami, with new retailers opening in Ireland’s oldest City Centre. There have been queues and queues of young ladies, waiting patiently in line to buy lippy, liner, lashes, and much, much more, from a new “all things makeup” brand, that has opened in City Square Shopping Centre. This hysteria follows hotfoot (excuse the pun), on the back of a new shoe brand, which has rightly chosen Waterford City as its south east flagship store. These two brands will certainly add to our retail offering and are excellent news, just in time for Christmas.

The retail expansion over the last few weeks has continued to improve, through the work of some stakeholders and in particular, the committee members of the Waterford Business Group. They have been working tirelessly away in the background, making personal contacts, speaking to and encouraging the relocation of brands to our City Centre. We cannot underestimate the volume of voluntary work undertaken on our behalf, to make Waterford a better place.

Hopefully, T & H will be opening soon and the planning issues being encountered by several other brands, will be resolved in a positive light. Thus, adding significantly to our and our visitors’ retail experience of the City Centre. The more attractive and unique our City Centre becomes, the better the shopping fulfilment will be for everyone.

Of course Winter in Waterford, now comes with Winterval attached too. Incidentally, a name Mr McCarthy, at WLR, has difficulty liking! I heard him mention this on Friday’s programme and he might be right, as Mrs Garland too has difficulty with the name. Anyway, Winterval will be back on our streets on 25^th November, a week later than last year and this will also be the date for the switching on, of our Christmas lights. This sparked much debate last week and I for one, believe that the third Friday in November is the correct switching on, of the lights and the start of our Christmas retail period. This change of date, at the behest of whom and with no consultation with our retailers, has put us a week behind our competitors. Bah Humbug!

I have no doubt that there are plans afoot, to do something special on Friday 18^th November. This should be the lights on date. To this extent keep an eye on the local press for further details. Now that’s the spirit of Christmas, giving something back to the people of Waterford!

So, there is much to look forward to in Waterford. We inevitably start the countdown, to that big red, beardy one, coming down the chimney. Delivering all manner of weird, wonderful and unwanted presents. Top of MY present wish list, are lower Council car parking rates for ALL!

Remember that the bountiful few weeks in the run up to Christmas, may well account for up to 30% of our local businesses annual turnover.

Shop smart, shop local, shop Waterford!

Just where is OUR money???

We have heard many a local radio news snippet, over recent months and read countless column inches in our local newspapers, about the millions of Euros promised for Waterford’s infrastructural projects. These projects were to be “game changers” that would bring some parity to the complete lack of “regional investment” over countless numbers of years.

Yet, we are now, how many weeks on, from the last General Election and can anyone honestly says we have received a €1 towards these so called “game changers”? So many political representatives indicated that these would bankroll Waterford’s economic future.

The North Quay, where work seems to have literally ground to a halt. Due, I am sure, to engineering concerns around weight loadings on the old, frail and fragile “piles” that are precariously holding up the hundreds of tons of rubble. This whole area has been designated as a Strategic Development Zone (SDZ), which is good news and I recall that €30 million had been promised and earmarked, by FG, to develop the site and link it directly to the City Centre. That was over 16 months ago!

Has any of this money actually been drawn down, excuse the banking terminology and allocated to Waterford Council to start this much needed regeneration process? I don’t recall hearing or seeing any big media fanfare announcing that the “cash” had been lodged into the Council coffers. Therefore I have to assume that NO money has yet been received for the SDZ to start and ultimately flourish.

This same sad story can be repeated at the Airport. We were promised many Euros to develop that runway, allowing larger jets access to Waterford and the 500,000 people of South East region. But, once again, not one cent of this appears to have come our way. In fact we are now being told that money is available for everything else, but the essential runway extension!

In the meantime, the people of the South East are discovering that Dublin is now much, much closer and easier to reach. The M9 has not a traffic light in sight and with the Newlands Cross flyover, the journey time to Dublin is more than manageable and predictable. The east coast N11/M11 route from Wexford is also to a large extent quicker than days of old and when the New Ross second bridge comes on stream, we will have a choice of two very fast direct routes to Dublin.

I also imagine that the business case for a consistent, less than two hour drive from Dublin to Waterford, is now working against us. Many FDI investors have far longer commute times to work! So the case for a regional airport in the south east diminishes even further. This assumption seems to carry some weight when we review the fact that only circa 6 FDI visits have taken place in Waterford this year! We seem once again to be on the road to becoming a less attractive alternative to many other cities and regions.

There is the ongoing debacle around UHW – no need to regurgitate the shambolic mess that some have created here.

So, these three are examples of promises that have not materialised. Money that had been “earmarked” for Waterford and yet none, nil, nada, zilch, seems to have been paid to us, to start our economic recovery and get our City and region booming once again!

On foot of the non-delivery of these funds, we are hearing far too many of our political representatives scoring points against each other. Rather than working out just where this alternative money might come from, they spin the “if we were in Government line”.

Why do other political regions deliver actual real infrastructure investment? Surely, all politicians have the same access to identical Civil Servants, who might just be able to point them in the right direction, explaining how to loosen the purse strings.

We are systematically being downgraded and this will continue unless we see the promised Euros coming our way to stem the tide.

Sadly, we appear to have too many King Cnuts (more commonly know as Canute).

Your budget is just around the corner!

Waterford Council is currently preparing the 2017 budget. Last week we saw the first shots being fired in this annual battle of the abacuses. Our Councillors, quite rightly, opposed and ultimately rejected an Executive proposal that would have increased your household charge, roof tax or Council tax by 7.5%.

This planned increase was to fill an indicated, circa €1,300,000, deficit hole in the 2017 budget. Interestingly, a similar figure also needed to be found, for a fissure that appeared in the 2016 budget – due, we were told, to the recalculation of rateable income from mobile phone masts and Irish Water infrastructure (I think!). With the direct result that an empty premises, commercial rates charge, of circa 20%, of the rateable value being introduced and levied on all empty premises in the City and County.

To be asking struggling households to stretch already broken family budgets and pay further housing tax would take even more money out of our very fragile local economy. The decision of our Councillors to reject this proposal will of course mean that the indicated shortage of €1,300,000 will have to be found elsewhere.

The normal “cash cow” for such a shortfall is of course commercial or business rates. Unfortunately, there are only so many times that you can milk a cow and as we are on the third tier of Ireland’s recovery table, any money coming out of our delicate recovery is a worry.

To put it simply, there are businesses in and around John Robert’s Square paying circa €40,000 in commercial rates. Assuming that they are working on a generous margin of 10% then these businesses will have to generate €400,000 in sales just to pay the rates bill alone. Now add on salaries, electricity, water rates, employers’ liabilities, insurance etc and you will see that in no time at all, a business could quite easily have to turnover in excess of €1,000,000 just to open its doors to a paying customer – that is how hard it is to do business!

Taking any additional money out of our delicate local economy, will have a detrimental effect on employment. Unfortunately, everything is linked economically through very precarious bonds and any attempt to stretch those bonds, which are already at breaking point, will have catastrophic consequences. 

Whilst we can see very small shoots of recovery, we need to keep the momentum going in the right direction and taking money out of our local economy is not the way to go. We need to be promoting spending, supporting business investment and most importantly encouraging people back into the very heart of our City, to shop locally.

There are a whole host of holistic measures needed to make this happen.

For instance, we need to start bringing people back into the City Centre on Friday evenings. One way is by getting rid of ridiculous car parking charges that continue way past 6pm. How can “early-bird” offers work if you are paying €3 or €4 in car parking charges? Businesses CANNOT stay open on a Friday evening if the footfall is not there! As it is TOO expensive to open for 2 or 3 hours when you are paying such high rates, wages, utilities etc etc. If you are only turning over a few Euros in sales, there is no point in being open and no business cannot continue to sustain mounting losses.

Someone somewhere needs to make these brave decisions and tackle why we cannot attract footfall into the City Centre.

Our Councillors rejected a proposed increase in household tax. Now, despite an apparent black hole in the finances, they need to push the Executive to be creative with car parking charges and, perhaps, insist on a pilot scheme to get rid of Friday night charges altogether. Try this and see if footfall increases. Try this and see if the City Centre can in fact attract people from other free car parking areas around the City Centre. A simple solution to a rather large elephant in the room!

Alas, I fear that the fear of change will result in maintaining the status quo.

One year on!

It has been one year since I started writing my wee column in the Waterford Today. WOW, time does fly as you get older!

I switched from another “Waterford” free sheet, due to the fact that it was not really being produced in Waterford. As a “blow-in”, who is passionate about Ireland’s Oldest City, I was very conscious that to be supporting the “Made in Waterford” brand, I had to be contributing to a Waterford produced product. A chat with Paddy (The Editor) Gallagher and we agreed a seamless transfer to Waterford Today. A publication that has a small, but significant, tagline that you may never even have noticed - “ABC accredited circulation”.

It is funny that having worked, so many years ago, for the exhibition arm of a European publishing company, that literally sold hundreds of thousands of pounds of monthly advertising, I would once again understand the significance of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures. These are figures that detail just how many people are reading a particular publication.

Sometimes, you do wonder if such stated figures are correct. But, judging by the number of people who do tell me that they read my wee column, on a regular basis, I have to assume that, in the case of Waterford Today, their readership numbers are extremely high and reflective of the ABC accreditation.

That is good news for me. As I know that when the newspaper arrives through your letterbox or is collected at your local newsagent, you will read this and share with other family members in the household. Yes, I also publish the article as a blog and this in turn is shared through the Waterford Business Group and the Ferrybank Newsletter (both on Facebook). These additional outlets give the article extremely high readership numbers and for that I am eternally thankful and, well, surprised and humbled.

To have the opportunity to speak one’s mind, through the medium of print, without the need to hide behind a pseudonym, is a wonderful opportunity to spark debate and openly discuss significant issues. As can be seen from the reaction to my recent article on Summerval. Front page headlines in one weekly newspaper and headline billing on Deise AM!

The point of such articles is to inform, you, members of the general public, by making more

transparent the information that is readily available to you, but is perhaps deliberately difficult to find. For Waterford to move forward we do need more inclusiveness and this starts with early engagement and a more open communication flow. Something that we in Waterford are, if the truth be told, not particularly good at.

There appears to be a communication block when it comes to getting many a vital message across. Maybe, the people of Waterford have just switched off to the current crop of communicators, as they feel that they are constantly being spun. Or perhaps the way that the information, deigned to be divulged, is being packaged is wrong, inappropriate and written in gobbledegook. The messaging becomes irrelevant because it is presented very poorly.

An advert on local radio does not reach ALL the masses. A notice in the local papers is NOT always read. A leaflet left in a public building is NOT always picked up, and so on.

To get any message across and understood you need a combination of many resources. Perhaps the one most forgotten about and most powerful is face to face interaction. Nothing beats “wearing out the old shoe leather” when you need to maximise communication messaging.

My wee column, “Waterford Business Matters”, is my contribution to help readers understand the many, many, issues that I see face the City, County and SE Region. If we do not know the issues then we cannot tackle the source of our problems.

Economically and socially we are in a very tough place and I feel that we need to be more open, honest and frank with our discussions on how to make Waterford so much better for EVERYONE.

Roll on the next 12 months.

Our jobs and retail conundrum.

"Scoop" - a very good digger.

I like to think that I am a good “digger”, not may I add in the garden, as most things I plant unfortunately die. The green fingers in the Garland Clan definitely belong to the fairer sex – I could not even grow my GIY garlic!

What I mean is that when I wish to write about a particular topic I do my very best to dig out some research or at the very least I look for some statistical information that will help get my writing juices flowing. This in turn allows me the time to bash away on my keyboard, time and time again, so that I now really enjoy expressing my views and opinions though the medium of print.

I regularly use a number of reference sites, on the old Interweb, and the Central Statistic Office (CSO) site was used to last week garner some interesting statistics about the regional variations in a measure called Gross Added Value (GAV). This measures “the difference between production value and intermediate consumption and represents the value added by the firm.” This is a great site for statistics but I do feel that it is overly complicated to use and maybe this is deliberate so as to dissuade people from engaging.

This GAV figure is measured in Euro and the state’s average for 2012 (the last statistical data point) is €34,308, Dublin measured €51,839 and the South East came in at €23,588. Quite a significant variation then across the country, as you would expect. The South East’s high for GAV was back in 2007 when the figure was at €29,884, but this was still significantly below the state average for that year of €39,522.

This GAV figures reflects the low wages economies across the South East which should, in theory, make the SE a more competitive inward investment option.

However, a multi-national will not invest into a region based on low wages alone, it may need a specific skill set or a multi-faceted spread of skills that will ultimately help generate profit to offset what would be a multimillion Euro investment. The stakes are very high!

The low GAV also backs up the statistics that show, right across the SE, there is significantly lower disposable income for our very localised economy. After all if you have only €50 to spend at the end of the week you will spend €50 and if you have €300 the difference this makes is to our economy is considerable. This much lower disposable income directly influences the retailing opportunities in our City Centre and across the whole SE region.

Our current conundrum is this.

To get a better retail mix and a better retail branding in the City we need to see more money being spent in our local economy. But we cannot increase this spend until such times as we attract better higher paid jobs. But attracting those better higher paid jobs will affect our GAV and possibly makes us even more unattractive to future investment.

It actually is a very difficult set of balls to be juggling.

But the balls have been juggled now for many, many years and yet we appear to be no further forward in actually making Waterford and the SE an important place for increased FDI and other indigenous investment streams.

We can only improve the Status Quo by radically looking at just how attractive we are for investment, because the route we have currently chosen is clearly not working. The City, County and Region need to look for far-reaching solutions that will make the SE THE most attractive place to invest.

 

We need to be better than every other region full stop!

Perhaps one quick immediate solution is to stop looking at commercial rates as a simple cash cow and start actually incentivising investment through a lower rate structure and essentially reducing the cost of being in business in Waterford.

If we do this the future statistics will show that in 2016 was in fact a benchmark year, a year when we put Waterford back on the investment map. New foundations are needed so let us start building them now.

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.

It is Budget time once again!

The 2015/2016 national budget is now behind us and we are just awaiting some last minute discussions in the Dáil, some machinations in the Seanad, and then the final approval of the Finance Bill, traditionally, sometime in February and then it will be all over for another year and it could well be the last budget delivered by the FG/Labour coalition as we move inextricably towards the promised “E-A-R-L-Y” spring election. Before we know it, it will be 2016 and we will all have forgotten about Mr Noonan’s last budget.

However, for us in Waterford, there is another budget looming on the horizon – the Waterford City and County Council budget.

As the Council begin to mull over their financial figures and projections for 2016, we are once again nearer the time for our Council Executive and our Council Representatives to vote on the 2016 budget, which will be somewhere around the €132,000,000 mark! It is a time for us to see how our representatives perform in what is seen by many as their most fundamental task.

Will the proposed budget be passed? Will we see pact voting? Will we see strategic voting? Will we see a genuine forensics analysis of the budget figures?

This is the time of year when our public representatives earn their corn and it really is a time of year when we hope that they will look at the bigger picture, rather than a parochial view of their own wards, and make the right decisions that will drive economic investment back into the City Centre and further afield across the whole County. Failure to understand the economics of making sound budgetary decisions will have a profound effect on how we perform as a City and County in 2016.

This budget sets out the Council’s spending plans for 2016 and also sets income targets on big ticket items such as the Commercial Rates collection which in the last budget was circa €32,000,000, it sets the household charges, car parking charges and all the other associated cost centres that will allow the Council to operate for the next 12 months. We will also see spending plans outlined and discussed such as the delivery of the Waterford City Centre Urban Renewal Plans, festival spending budgets, roads maintenance plans, housing spending and much, much more besides.

The headline figures for businesses will, of course, be the Commercial Rates collection amounts and whether or not these will remain the same, increase or ideally, for businesses to invest, these should be reduced by up to 20%. A rates reduction will encourage investment, will increase employment and will make for a better City Centre.

Alas, I feel that these will remain the same as the last two years and yet the brave decision has to be the introduction of a significant reduction to help struggling City Centre businesses. Any offset in the reduction of rates will be collected with new businesses starting up and a significant rates reduction will go some way to encouraging the retail brands the City is currently missing to invest in Waterford. In addition a better retail mix will drive increased footfall and this in turn will also encourage more business start-ups and these new businesses will pay their share in commercial rates. Win Win!

Another brave decision would be the reduction in car parking charges and, if the Council take the lead in this process, then the private owners have to follow suits. This is still the elephant in the room and until we tackle this issue we will find it increasingly difficult to encourage the people on the “Dunmore Road” into the City Centre never mind further afield.

I still wonder if, due to their free car parking passes, our representatives see the car parking as an issue or perhaps they drive around wearing rose tinted glasses.

After all, if it costs you nothing, zero, nada, nil to park your car in Waterford City and County why would there be a problem?

Perception is everything!

When marketing or branding a product or service, that is predominantly aimed at members of the public, our perception is all encompassing to the process of actually successfully buying that product or service.

In circumstances where we have a poor perception of a product or service we are pre-programmed to avoid at all costs and to a greater degree we imagine, rightly or wrongly, that said product or service is inherently poor or inferior, regardless of what the marketing messages might be telling us.

By definition, perception is the process in which we use our senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or a particular situation.

And how does this exactly relate to Waterford City.

It is very simple. Everyone’s perception of Waterford City varies in an ever so slightly different way because we all sense experiences in slightly differing ways.

To my mind the City still has a huge untapped potential that needs to be realised in the short and medium term to get the City back as the economic hub of the South East. In my current work role and through my involvement with various groups and committees I see firsthand the enormous amount of work being planned and being carried out. This work will, without any doubt, benefit the many businesses and therefore all the people of Waterford City and County in the very near future.

However, as I am so immersed in these processes my perception more often than not differs from that of my family, my close friends and my business colleagues. I just constantly see that the City and County have not really scratched the surface of what is possible to drive the region forward and for Waterford City to regain its rightful place as the fourth City of Ireland (in economic terms). 

I am always a glass half full person.

I do often feel that I am sometimes alone in that positivity or at the very least I am one of a very small minority that sees a positive future vision that will literally put Waterford back on the map.

I have advocated on many occasions, both in print and on radio, that every voter in Waterford should attend at least one Council meeting in their lifetime. This will give voters the chance to see at firsthand how Council runs, functions and operates through our locally elected representatives. It will also help people understand how the City and or County are perceived through the eyes our elected representatives and the council executive.

Is your vision of the City the same as that of our elected representatives?

With an ever improving retail offering we must encourage even more people back into Waterford City Centre to experience these new shopping opportunities and with the proposed additional shopping centre to come on stream we must take every opportunity to drive up footfall in the City Centre.

It is more important than ever to get this right as we now see out of City Centre retail villages offering a real carrot to attracting shoppers – lots of free car parking!

The many City Centre retail shops can encourage people across their threshold with sales, end of season sales and lots of seasonal special offers. So why can we not look towards opportunities that offer a similar enticing promotion based around parking your car?

Monaco where the first hour of car parking is FREE!

Will further reduced car parking rates or specific car parking offers, similar to those in Cork, Limerick, Dungarvan and Kilkenny, bring increased footfall back into to the City Centre?

Well, we will not know until we have tried and until we try we will always be perceived, by the people of Waterford and many of our visitors, as an expensive place to park a car - no matter what the car park sign states the hourly rate might be.

Imagine All The People.

As businesses edge ever closer to the last quarter of the 2015 financial year many will start reviewing the year just past and start to scrutinise whether or not it has come up to the meticulous financial planning that took place some nine or even ten months or so ago. As each of Waterford’s many City Centre businesses give due consideration as to whether 2015 has been a good, bad or just an average year we must bear in mind that there as some circa 1500 people employed across our City Centre and as such our City Centre is one of our largest “employers” and the success or failure of our City Centre will impact on everyone who lives, works and plays in Waterford.

There can be no doubt that increasing footfall in the last quarter of the year will be welcome, but I fear that it will not be enough for a number of businesses who are once again literally hanging on by their fingertips – it seems that this is becoming a rather worrying annual trend!

We need to address a more constructive and creative way of increasing the footfall right across the entire City Centre and we need to ensure that our City Centre becomes a destination that attracts and encourages a higher spend from right across the wider South East region and further afield.

At present we can see continued pressure on our City Centre businesses and there is repeated increased pressure on these businesses in terms of paying the “day to day” associated business costs. In fact there are many business owners now having to resort to paying for business bills and expenses on their own personal credit cards just to survive from one month to the next. Yet this message of hardship does not seem to be being addressed and there are many people that quite wrongly assume that if you are in business today in Waterford you are making a fortune! How wrong can you be!

Let us not be in any doubt that Waterford is on the third or last tier of Ireland’s economic recovery and we lag so far behind the likes Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway that it will take significant investment and help to get us near to any sort of meaningful recovery, let alone on par with these other Cities that are now so far ahead of Waterford that we may never catch up. By the very nature of this lopsided, central belt, recovery the South East and North West will need considerable economic incentives that far exceed what we are currently receiving at the moment.

Our City Centre employers must have an opportunity to compete and this in turn will create employment and this in turn will generate greater spend and this in turn will increase footfall – it really is a case of ever increasing circles. But alas there are those who cannot see these opportunities and rather than use carrots to get our localised economy moving, once again we are being beaten with not one stick but several sticks all at once.

So just how do we increase the footfall through our City Centre and that is the €64,000,000 question?

Our festivals certainly bring additional footfall to the City but they do not necessarily bring increased spend for our hard hit commercial rate payers. The many festivals that we can now call annual events do continue to be reasonably successful but as with all events they have a lifespan and there are pluses and minuses to holding and staging such large annual events.

Unless these are staged as part of an overall “festival plan”, that avoids “clustering” of events, then there will be a diminishing return on our investment. In addition due to the fact that we continue to see falling or stagnant footfall to the City “clustering” our festival automatically equates to lessening the economic benefit for the commercial rate paying businesses in our City.

If we are to become a “festival capital” capable of rivalling the likes of Galway City then we must try harder to get it right, and perhaps more importantly we must work harder to get a greater “buy-in” from the very businesses that are paying their part through annual commercial rates contributions. At present many of these businesses see and perceive no or very little financial return and therefore we will continue to see issues around “buy-in”. Perhaps the messaging is all wrong and just maybe certain stakeholders are just expecting businesses to “buy-in” without examining the messaging they are delivering. Or at the very least they are wrongly “assuming” they have got the messaging right when in fact the only people on the same page are those closest to them and not the wider City stakeholders.

In a past life I organised trade exhibitions all around the UK and to keep these exhibitions fresh and relevant we had to introduce new exhibitors every year, we had to develop the exhibition every year and we had to be very creative with the messaging every year. If we got all that right we would continue to see annual increases in visitor numbers and increased visitor numbers meant more income for the exhibitors and this in turn gave the exhibition longevity. Get it wrong and an exhibition would very quickly become extinct. As I see it attracting people to our City Centre is much like attract people to those exhibitions I once relied on to make a living. In the exhibition industry we needed to have lots of carrots and there was not a stick to be seen anywhere.

One of the other recurrent issues with driving footfall up in the City Centre is of course the perceived cost of car parking. As a City we can now see mounting pressure attracting people from residential areas such as the Dunmore Road into the City Centre. The now huge variety of new shops and free car parking available in and around Ardkeen means there is less of an incentive for people to travel those extra few kilometres to the City Centre.

Drive past this area of the City and you will see many, many cars parked and many people shopping. And with the imminent proposed start to the excellent GIY project there will be literally many more attractive carrots in this area that will prevent even more people coming into the City Centre.

So it seems that unless we come up with a holistic approach to ensuring the renaissance of the City Centre we will continue to see it struggle and we will continue to see footfall remaining stagnant or falling. We really must come up with creative solutions that communicate the unique selling points of our City Centre and we need to give our City Centre businesses a much needed helping hand.

Let us stop looking for radical consultant lead answers when every man and his dog knows what is needed. We seem to be trying all manner of complicated solutions and yet the answers may well be right under our noses.

Are we using the wrong type of bricks to get the City back on track?

Are we using the wrong type of bricks to get the City back on track?

And to try to explain what I mean I will revert back to my childhood and when we were all “wee bairns” we all played with Lego Bricks, Stickle Bricks, Duplo Bricks and probably Meccano (advanced types of bricks if you like). But what we never did was try to play with them all together or try to create a design that incorporated aspects of multiple differing bricks, as it simply did not work. No matter how hard you tried the Lego was not compatible with the Duplo or the Stickle Bricks and absolutely nothing was compatible with Meccano!

As a child our worlds were completely consumed by one type of building material that suited one specific age group until we were old enough to eagerly move onto something else that suited a completely new older age group.

My own building path went as follows; Stickle Bricks, Lego, Meccano and then Airfix, and I would hazard a bet that many reading this article followed the exact same path – age permitting of course.

This was of course a deliberate ploy by each manufacturer and I am sure that they all agreed in the confines of cosy “Golden-Circles-Boardrooms” that each would target a specific market sector and by ensuring that each construction set was non-compatible with another in the market they could ALL have some market share and of course each would then have a chance to build brand loyalty. What ultimately happened with each of these toys is that you were either a Lego boy or a Meccano boy or Airfix boy and so on. We see this now replicated in the twenty first century but with phone brands – it is either Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, Blackberry and so on.

What has made many toy manufacturers and today’s modern phone suppliers so successful is that they have literally moved heaven and earth to make you the consumer brand loyal. They have ensured that you have made an informed choice to support one particular manufacturer as you have become accustomed to that brands; quality, feel, technology, design, the tactile nature of the product, the way the product make you feel and so on. By sticking to one winning formula that is ever evolving and ever improving, albeit in small increments, they have ensured that you will stick purchasing what you know because you know “It does exactly what is says in the tin.”

So what of brand Waterford and the future development of the City and its City Centre?

There has been much talk and debate in recent weeks around the future Urban Renewal Plans, the North Quays, the Michael Street Shopping Development, the Apple Market Development and of course much debate around the developed Viking Triangle area and access in and out of this area of prime real estate or our most expensive bus park, as some are now calling the area (and with some justification too).

But in terms of moving the City forward I often feel and so do many others that there appears to be very little joined up thinking when it comes to actually developing the City. Or in other words some are Lego users, some are Stickle Brick champions and some are Meccano aficionados.

On the surface we have many, many great and potentially future changing ideas but I and many others do feel that getting them ALL to work together in harmony for the betterment of Waterford citizens will be a monumental task, an impossible task even. One does get the feeling that all the plans we read and hear about are somehow being drafted and discussed in isolated underground bunkers where no other opinion matters for fear of upsetting someone, and as a result we do not get the much needed robust debate and we do not get people willing to put a hand, never mind their head, above the parapet. It is almost as if there is a collective fear around getting involved or perhaps there is a fear that decisions have already been made and no matter what lobbying or interaction takes place the only opinion that matters is the one that comes out of the underground bunker!

I admit that there is concern and apathy from many businesses that despite the circa €33,000,000 paid in commercial rates they will never really be listened to and the citizens of Waterford at times simply feel “What is the point!”

We have yet to build any brand loyalty towards the City and we are ALL confused as we see too many different messages and this ultimately will create confusion, bewilderment, apathy, indifference and so on. The City must start delivering projects in real-time and delivering these in a proper logical order.

So, let us deliver and build the Michael Street shopping centre, then deliver a North Quay development and if we see hundreds of thousands of extra tourists and visitors spending money in the City as a results of these two developments, then have a look at the traffic flow and roads.

But whatever we do we must ALL be using the same type of bricks otherwise nothing will get done.

ENDS