By DOM MASSONI in Verrierdale
Brisbane City Council has just announced it will reduce fees for eateries across the city. Cafes and restaurants will have their council fees slashed as part of a multi-million dollar push by Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner to support small business in the suburbs.
Footpath dining permit fees for new businesses will be cut in half – a saving of about $670. Food business licences for new eateries will be reduced by 50% to about $400 a year. Existing small businesses will get a 10% reduction in annual fees.
These discounts are being focused on fees and charges that small business are most impacted by. And better use of local shopfronts will mean more to see and do locally, right across Brisbane.
Now, looking back home, let’s hope our two local councils, Sunshine Coast and Noosa, will jump on-board and follow these measures, creating a more positive attitude toward small business here on the coast.
Sunshine Coast Council, under Mark Jamieson, has shown itself to be very proactive and encouraging to small business in the tourism industries. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Noosa Council’s negative, and at times damagingly pedantic, attitude to new small businesses on their tourist strips.
If anything, Noosa Council has been known to go to extra lengths and make things extremely difficult for anyone with even a minor breach of its very strict rules and regulations and its often punitive attitude to administering them.
Let’s hope that by the time of the next council election in nine months, Noosa Council will have woken up to itself and realised that small businesses are the heart and soul of our community.
Small business really need the laws for commercial leasing changed to ensure the owners of properties cannot charge the leasee ALL outgoings. Only those directly related to the activity of the business should be passed on. Furthermore, proof of this expenditure should be submitted with the account fir payment. At the present time leaders have no copy of the BOD accounting. It’s highway robbery for some tenants. It business closure for others
I wonder if small business is really ‘the heart and soul of our community’. People, friends and family, nature, lifestyle, creativity, volunteers, sporting and community organisations, all come more to mind to me as the heart and soul of our community rather than small business. I agree it’s an important part of the economy, and deserves to be encouraged, but that’s not ALL councils should be concerned about.
You’ve made some detrimental statements about Noosa Council without telling us why. You may be right – SCC might take a more libertarian attitude to small business development than Noosa, and Noosa Council might appear to those with business interests as ‘damaging, pedantic, and punative’ in comparison, but it’s also a question of where a community’s priorities lie and what sort of place we want to live in. Whenever I have to deal with businesses in Maroochydoore, or Kawana, Caloundra etc I am struck by how difficult it is, how unplanned the development, how ugly the setting, and how frustrating and unpleasant it is finding one’s way through such a plethora of signage that it all becomes meaningless. I’m always pleased to come back to Noosa.
You mention ‘new small businesses on the tourist strip’ as being particularly problematic. I’m glad our Council takes a considered approach and applies some regulation. After all,Noosa is not just a tourist attraction, it’s a place where people live and those people deserve an approach that takes into account more than the interests business owners have in maximising their profit.
I agree with Judy about doing business in the Sunshine Coast Council towns and suburbs. I hardly ever go down that way for business or retail purposes, but when I do I’m struck by the ugliness of the business precincts. Are businesses there any more successful there because of lack signage regulations? I imagine they rely on better marketing tools to bring customers than the blunt instrument that is signage.
Council policies certainly helped make Noosa into the attractive place it is today, not just for tourists, but for residents. Proof of this is the bouyant real estate market and the increased visitation by those who know an attractive, classy destination when they see one.
When regulation of urban design and controls on planning works this well, I’m all for it. Our biggest problem here is to retain resident amenity and control the effects of our increasing popularity.