Palmerston North Mayor Grant Smith optimistic city can weather Covid storm

A pothole in Vogel St. Bruce Lockhart told the council last year the major arterial route has been getting worse for years.

What do Palmerston North's Covid journey and the state of Vogel St have in common?

They are bumpy now but there is hope.

At his annual state of the city address to the Rotary Club of Palmerston North and Manawatū Business Chamber last week, mayor Grant Smith said 2022 was no normal year.

"It is no normal year and with the disruptions of Covid we do need to be realistic about what our expectations are."

It was going to be a bit bumpy in the next quarter or two but there was real light at the end of the tunnel.

"In a business sense it will be, I believe, a year of two halves, the first two quarters are going to be ropey with supply chain issues."

Quarters three and four looked a lot better and the city was well placed to steam ahead and recover nicely from Covid-19.

There will be a little bit of short-term pain, but Smith thought the city and the Manawatū region especially were in very good shape with many economic and social advantages, including a large essential workforce.

"I think we are going to get through this Covid storm pretty well intact."

And where does Vogel St fit in? Smith said the extra heavy traffic in the city at present is putting the roading network under real pressure. However, road reconstruction is to happen on Pioneer Highway, Summerhill Drive and Vogel St.

The mayor said the $650 million Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū Tararua Highway was making serious progress in the hills above Ashhurst and Woodville.

"Eighty per cent of that workforce are from around the wider Manawatū so this project has been a real winner."

Smith's joke that some say the highway may even open before Transmission Gully brought much laughter.

Over the coming months, the council would be consulting on district plan changes to rezone significant new areas for housing at Ashhurst, Aokautere, and Kakatangiata City West between Awapuni and Longburn. Kakatangiata would have more houses than Feilding. This work was to prepare for the next two decades of city growth and the council would like to have this strategy in place by the end of the year.

Smith acknowledged there needed to be a Linklater Reserve, Memorial Park or a mini Esplanade at Kakatangiata "otherwise you are not providing for people".

In response to a question from Stefan Speller about the council's Palmy, famous for being boring campaign, Smith said he was wondering when that question was going to come up. The spending on it was "pretty cheap". He didn't know the exact cost as it was an operational spend.

"That sort of advertising is risky ... it's tongue in check. I suppose the only problem with our campaign is there was a really good reason why Palmerston North isn't boring if you listened to the Jeremy Corbett linked video, but that call to action was really not solid. It's really Palmerston North is famous for being boring, yeah nah, come, this is the reasons why it isn't."

Asked by the Manawatū Guardian what he says to people when they complain about the word Palmy, Smith said it was an endearment and the issue was more how you used it and how frequently. His friends acknowledged Palmy as an endearment. "How's Palmy going?" "It's going very well thank you."

The official name of the city is Palmerston North and he was big on calling the city its proper name.

The lunch, which preceded the mayor's address, raised $300. That will be boosted to $900 via a two-for-one donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund 6000 polio vaccine doses.