Kaitaia businesses looking ahead

Kaitaia will welcome domestic tourists once the lockdown is over. Picture / File

The town's business community might be all but shut down under the government's Covid-19 measures, but the Kaitaia Business Association is looking ahead to a brighter future.

Association chair Andrea Panther last week joined other business associations and selected business owners in the Far North in a second conference call with Mayor John Carter since the commencement of Alert Level 4, sharing a range of concerns that Mr Carter undertook to relay to ministers and officials in Wellington.

Subjects raised included an opportunity to market the Far North post-lockdown for domestic tourism, with messages such as 'You've had four weeks of lockdown, now come North,' and 'You can't go overseas, but you can come North.'

Meanwhile Mr Carter said the Far North District Council was working with the government to reduce rates, and a request is to be made for the deferral of provisional tax, given the disparity between incomes over the last and current financial years.

Other issues included:

* Business owners wished to access their premises to collect necessary documents for the end of the financial year and to clear rubbish.

* Recycling was accumulating, and was likely going to end up in landfill, potentially creating an even bigger problem at the end of the lockdown.

* Non-profit organisations did not know who to go to for funds.

* Northland Inc was working with the tourism industry on redeployment and getting the industry up and running again.

* The possibility of the council persuading banks to change their mortgage holiday conditions so as not to impose additional costs on customers? ("Can the banks wear the pain like the rest of us?

* Was funding available for the training/retraining of local people in place of overseas workers?

* The council was endeavouring to speed up the resource and building consents processes, and was working with the government to simplify them.

Any association members with further concerns that they would like to be raised with Mr Carter was welcome to contact Anita Lasike