Over the years, I have seen enterprising individuals from our ethnic communities use these markets as a low cost platform to test their food products before introducing them into the mainstream market.
The success of these markets as thriving community hubs have made them excellent sites for council to target them as places where we can conduct public consultations on matters of public interest.
Currently, we are using them to publicise our Long Term Plan through our series of What Matters Most To You campaign.
Markets are still also cash economies. They are great places for fundraising and you frequently see school kids playing music or singing for donations.
During the 2012 Christchurch earthquake I organised a Red Cross collection at this market which, in just four hours, raised $4000.
Markets are fun places and Kapiti with its string of communities from Paekakariki to Otaki has a number of these markets that reflect their local characters.
They help create villages within the larger more impersonal urban populations. Given council's active support for these markets, it was great, on Saturday, to be invited by Warwick and Kevin to help celebrate the occasion by cutting a cake.
Talking of village connections and village communities, the irony is that we also live in a parallel universe as online global village communities.
On Thursday experts from Chorus set themselves up at Club Vista, Paraparaumu Beach, to promote their Ultra Fast Broadband services.
It's easy to recognise that our prosperity will be impacted by the $2 billion investment in roading expressways like TG and the Kapiti expressways.
It's harder to understand that the future of our economic, social and cultural lives increasingly depend on our total digital connectivity and the speed of these connections. The digital superhighway.
The Covid pandemic and lockdown forced a digital shift enabling many to work from home.
Chorus' community relations manager Jo Seddon noted that in August, Kapiti had only 37.6 per cent connections within the area serviced by fibre. This had slowly grown to the current 40.2 per cent figure.
This means that nearly 60 per cent of Kapiti's homes and businesses are not connected to the best they can get.
As mayor, I would like to see our communities, residents, businesses and especially those working from home to be on the very best connection available to us.
In 2011, the average New Zealand Kiwi household was only using 10GB of data per month.
Last month, that went up to 331GB. I'm told it's not slowing down, with Chorus predicting average household use to balloon to 1000GB by 2023. Kapiti's lag may be due to a lack of knowledge that connecting to fibre is free in most cases.
But this may not always be the situation so it's advisable to get the connection done as soon as possible.
The importance of a thorough and saturated UFB-connected Kapiti can't be understated.
It's an enabler and facilitator of our working, social and cultural lives.
And while a 60 per cent connection is not too bad we need to do better to get there.
Having said that there is still the caveman in me.
While China's Reserve Bank and Facebook are introducing their own crypto currencies, I still like the feel of cash.
