“The trade crisis is being underestimated, and Sarzana lacks vision and planning.”

“Businesses are suffering and gritting their teeth, but for how long? The data have been largely negative for some time, some more, some less, but negative. Also given my history, I cannot help but be critical and concerned about the performance of the trade sector in recent years, and by recent years I am talking about a decade.” This is how Matteo Tiberi, trader and leader of the group from the protagonist Sarzana, begins his speech at the city council. “We are living in a crisis – he continues – – and I regret to say that it has been greatly underestimated, and in general, entrepreneurs, especially in the commercial sector, are accustomed to walking a tightrope, but today on the tightrope they walk, the walk is increasingly thin, and there is a risk of falling without any safety net, a rope that is also frayed by the total lack of vision and planning at all levels. Let us leave aside, for the moment, the general national picture, where for a long time I have not seen any kind of choice and decision to restore the centrality of the actual points of sale, especially the neighboring ones, which have always been synonymous with the protection of areas and neighborhoods, as well as the “producers” of serious and safe jobs, and let us focus on the local. The controversy in recent days about the unlimited opening of a shopping center with medium-sized sales structures is the natural consequence of a total lack of vision and planning. Another discount store will bring the illusion of some employment that will be balanced by the loss of a few jobs in other buildings and a few stores that will close their doors, and not only in the historic center. It will once again place itself at the bottom of both the labor offer and the commercial offer. And continue talking about the recovery of a deteriorated area, sorry, but I can no longer hear it. We can talk about the deterioration of a public area, where the intervention of the administration is inevitable, but talking about the deterioration of a private area (Navonella docet) takes on more the appearance of a form of extortion. But in the end, since there is no vision or programming, this is the result. In recent months, we have strongly objected to increases, because these increases, from various taxes, from advertising, moreover a victim of the Wild West of cartels, whose effectiveness is weakened but whose activities find themselves ridiculously paying more, we have objected to historical increases, both for individuals and companies, in the face of a loss of about 5% in diversified income compared to 2018, just to talk about aid to the sector… We hear about culture, but what strategy is being implemented because the system does the city’s economy benefit from it? Nobody! That’s the answer. The data on trade that I requested months ago and which finally arrived, even if they are dirty, as specified, confirm this trend, the closure of shops, the rotation of restaurant activities, but the reality is that there is no analysis or study to give a new and correct identity to Sarzana, which for years has been considered an example, not only in our territory. It is clear that over time, the emergence of large-scale retail first and then e-commerce has hurt small businesses, but the healthy part of this sector has been able to resist and reinvent itself, often inspired by “new competitors”, “but the problem today more than ever, is the decline in people’s spending power, and the illusion of access to purchases at “wholesale” prices triumphs, which is often synonymous with waste. This leads to the abandonment of many activities that, if they are not included in a local project and program, are left adrift. We need real incentives, cost reductions, we need a decent and clean city and land, with suitable and practical parking lots. We are losing value”.