A CBD hospitality worker who led a more than 700-strong petition and reached out to Tauranga City Council last year thinks their recent moves to address parking could have been made sooner.

At Tauranga City Council's meeting last week, council approved broadening the scope of a $500,000 per annum three-year fund to help support Tauranga CBD.

Initially the fund was intended to rise the supply of residential accommodation however, according to council general manager of city developments and partnerships Gareth Wallis: 'the people knocking on our [council's] door to use that for that purpose has dried up”. Now the fund will be widened to include business support for those impacted by construction, increasing the city's vibrancy, and of course – parking.

During April 3's meeting Gareth stated: 'Staff carparking is actually a bigger issue at the moment and some of our businesses are struggling to attract staff because they can't afford to pay for parking”. 'If they park in the cheaper carparks they're too far away and at three o' clock in the morning when you've got to get to your car it's unsafe, so those are the kind of things that we'd like to look to try and respond to through this fund.” With winter approaching, Gareth says: 'the need is now”.

Old concerns

Yet for CBD hospitality worker Ethan Watene, these are all concerns that he approached council with about seven months ago. 'It's good that they're looking at it now, but obviously something could've been done a little bit earlier on and we probably wouldn't be quite as deep in this predicament as we are now,” says Ethan.

Last October Ethan created a petition to support CBD worker parking following council's announcement to remove the city's free one-hour and two-hour on-street parking, which was subsequently executed in December.

In response to enquiries by The Sun, TCC director of transport Brendan Bisley says: 'We initially introduced paid parking in December to support retailers and customers who were concerned people working in the city were occupying on-street parking spaces all day”. 'While the long-term goal is for people to be less reliant on cars, we recognise there will always be a need to provide carparking options for people who work and visit the city centre. There is no silver bullet answer to parking and we are currently looking at options that will help achieve our collective goals.”

Very slack

Ethan's petition has more than 700 signatures and proposes that CBD workers have reduced parking costs and suggests the potential of a designated parking building for city workers. He says he approached council about the petition last year. 'I emailed it through to all the commissioners and tried to get in contact with them multiple times through the phone, email everything and I just couldn't...I had so many people behind me and for them to come to realise seven months later that: ‘Hey this isn't necessarily working, what should we do?' It's very slack in my opinion.”

When The Sun asked council if they were aware of Ethan's petition he created back in October, Brendan responded: 'We would welcome a conversation with Ethan to discuss his ideas and the petition in more detail and together look at what solutions might be viable”.

Potential solutions

Among talk of solutions to address hospitality workers' parking concerns, Commissioner Stephen Selwood stated at last Monday's meeting there is discussion council may change the paid parking times to end at 5pm as opposed to 6pm.

'I would imagine that would very positively affect those hospitality workers because they would be able to come in just prior to their shift depending obviously when their shift starts.”

Ethan, who normally works 11am to 10pm, says for people that start later in the day 'it would definitely help out a lot”. However continues: 'For those of us who are there for majority of the day, it's not as much as we'd probably hope for”.

'Hopefully they can implement something that works for everyone, or even just make it a bit more accessible to come to town,” says Ethan.

For now, Ethan still pays more than $50 per week at The Strand's waterfront carpark while other workers walk the distance to get free carparks.

After The Sun contacted council about Ethan's petition, he has received response from council. Council apologised to Ethan for the delay in response and have invited him to attend to the next council meeting scheduled for Monday, May 1 to formally present his petition.