I'm liking this push by a group of Papamoa businesses to turn our great coastal suburb into a place people want to come to for things other than our fabulous beach.
It is long overdue and, it has to be said, has to be done by locals rather than waiting for out-of-towners to get with the programme.
By out-of-towners I mean anyone from outside the borders of the People's Republic of Papamoa.
The 89 businesses and property owners are happy to accept higher rates - an extra half a per cent each year - to enable the nicely named Papamoa Unlimited group to put the spotlight on Tauranga's biggest, fastest growing and most ignored suburb.
Ignored? You ask. Yup, have a think on this ...
The council is finally getting around to installing signs telling people about where to go during an emergency evacuation, such as one spurred by a tsunami.
Where is chosen first?
Papamoa? Fat chance. Why put evacuation signs up for the 16km of unprotected coastline telling 22,000 residents how to flee - other than on their two exit routes - when you can have these wonderful signs in downtown the Mount!
Do council officers seriously think the good folk of Mount Maunganui wouldn't know the safest place to be would be on Mauao? The biggest freaking lump of rock along the entire coast ...
God, give me strength.
Anyway, back to people who care about Papamoa.
Top of Papamoa Unlimited's list for attracting people to Papamoa are a series of promotions and community events, including a Lantern Festival, a fun run and a Christmas parade. All great ideas.
I'm sure we used to have a Christmas by the Beach parade, but that seems to have gone by the wayside - along with our hopes of tsunami sirens and extra roads out of our suburb.
Here's a thought.
Why are we bothering to wait for the glacial-quick council to get off its collective backside and give us an emergency warning system that we have been holding our breaths for since 2005? It only has to be a simple air-raid siren system - that could be up and running for about $400,000.
No, says council, we must wait for national standards to be set by mid next year.
Hang on, we say, that would only be for the penpushers to talk about national standards. And we all know what that means. A group of bureaucrats meeting, yakking a lot, having more meetings, proposing something, going away and allegedly thinking about it, yakking some more, meeting again ... ad nauseam.
The sad fact is, the recent decision by the council to defer sirens is only another delaying tactic so they don't have to do anything. We will be lucky to get sirens before we become the next Atlantis.
And as for one officer's comments that sirens would cost $1-$2 million - what planet is that person on?
It will only cost that much if left to council officers who wouldn't know how to spend money sensibly if their lives depended upon it.
Those exorbitant costings are as annoying as the regularly trotted out lines used to downplay the need for sirens, which include things along the lines of "if you feel an earthquake then you should move to higher ground," followed by "the biggest danger of a tsunami will come from an earthquake in the Kermadec Trench".
Okay guys, explain this: how do we feel an earthquake in the Kermadec Trench, which is about 700km away?
Or even one that occurs 200km away, or 100km.
Hell, we wouldn't even feel one from White Island.
The vote to delay sirens is a shameful move by a new council that may have already become beguiled by the Gnomes of Willow St.
On the issue of sirens, I think we residents - like Papamoa Unlimited - need to take matters into our own hands and say "up yours" to our uninterested local council.
Let's approach TECT and other grants bodies and see if they will do what the people we actually pay will not - and help us get some emergency sirens.
They could kickstart an appeal and then we residents may just need to dip into our pockets and pay a small sum per house to get the job done. By my calculations, it could be less than $60 per household.
I'd certainly do so and I'd switch my power supplier, or buy from any major corporation that would help protect my suburb.
Hopefully, my 22,000 fellow Papamoans would do the same.
And you could guarantee it would be less expensive for anyone other than the council to do. Think on it, guys.
Long live the People's Republic of Papamoa!
Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.
Richard@richardmoore.com