Elections Issues

The Mayors of Napier and Hastings have both signaled their intention to stand for fourth terms in this years local Government elections. Hardly a surprise since neither could earn near as much as they now do, doing anything else.

Its a winner takes all proposition. For the incumbents loosing means loosing everything. The $100 000 salary, the council supplied motor vehicle, expense accounts, and prestige.

The Mayor of Hastings appears especially concerned. He has already publicly identified me as a serious challenger, perhaps with some justification as 3 years ago I came within 4000 votes of winning, when totally unknown, and campaigning on a single issue.

I am now better known and recent favorable media publicity over the airport issue has been helpful.

It seems he has engaged the services of a Wellington Based polling company who are asking whether respondents think the Mayor is doing a good job, who did they vote for last time, plus what do they think are the major issues. Surely questions the Mayor should have been asking a long time ago but instead he has chosen to ignore opinion that was not aligned with his own.

My guess is the Regional Sports Park could become his achillies heel, as he ignored the protests of significant sections of the community, firstly over the sale of Nelson Park, then dismissed criticism over the location of the new facility.

Funding for the Sports Park appears to be in disarray. Donors are not queuing up to provide support and the council is hiding the extent of the shortfall. Kelt Capital were paid around $300 000 in the first year with little or no return. A new fund raiser has now been appointed. At a guess some half a million dollars has already been paid out, just trying to get money in.

It seems the $17.5 million realised from the sale of Nelson Park is all spent. The circus involving Higgins Construction being given $1.9 million of council roading contracts in return for a half million dollar donation towards the park, is not a good look.

While Unison and the Regional Council have chipped in $3.5 million towards the Vellodrome it must be remembered these are publicly owned institutions so those funds are not exactly donations but more like compulsory charges.

The only real voluntary contribution is the very generous donation from Hastings Pak and Save.

The Mayor of Hastings would like us to forget these difficulties and has decided to make the amalgamation of Napier and Hastings his primary election issue. Chances are it is not paramount in the minds of Hastings electors.

Unfortunately the Mayor of Hastings is not also the Mayor of Napier as well because the present Mayor of Napier seems to have a quite different view of amalgamation stating in the past week that she sees no benefit for Napier, in joining forces. My observation is she is supported my the majority of residents of Art Deco city.

So does the Mayor of Hastings know something none of the rest of us know? Is he in secret talks to have Government force an amalgamation against the will of one of the two parties, as effectively it has done in Auckland? Or is he hoping to include Wairoa and Central Hawke's Bay so the no vote from Napier can be overwhelmed.

Clearly he has ambitions to be the new Mayor of Hawke's Bay Super City. This however is unlikely to ever happen, not because there will be no amalgamation but because he is unlikely to gain the support of Napier voters who believe Hastings is a cot case with out of control debt levels.

Last election he captured 11 000 votes, about 55% of the Hastings total while the Mayor of Napier gained over 15 000 votes or 80% of the vote. If they were competing head on for the same job it is clear the Mayor of Napier has a head start of 4000 votes and would likely win.

Its a year since the Hastings Mayor first nominated amalgamation as the big issue so it seems strange there has been no proposal to have a referendum included in the up coming elections. Or does it simply acknowledge that the result will be similar to 10 years ago when the idea was soundly rejected by the people of Napier. In any case referendum allowing people to vote on the issue would take it completely out of the arena for this years elections.

Clearly having two cities plus a Regional Council is wasteful. Three chief executives, duplicated heads of departments, two Mayors and a Chairman plus a couple of dozen surplus councillors suggest there are significant savings on offer.

There are other opportunities for savings by combining various activities. I have previously identified Emergency Management as one such area. Another glaring opportunity is IT or information technology. All three councils operate their own computer systems with significant hardware costs and many support staff. All three have recently updated their systems at huge costs to ratepayers yet all three have systems that are apparently totally incompatible.

If the Mayor of Hastings wishes to reduce the cost of local government why has he not pushed harder to amalgamate at least some of the most wasteful services.

Its not too late for the issue to be put on the Ballot paper. Doing so might destroy the Mayors campaign plans but it would give the rest of us a clearer picture of where we stand.