Local Government Elections

The process to elect people to represent our interests on local councils has started.

For the people of Hawke's Bay this means one of: the Hastings District Council, Napier City Council Central Hawke's Bay District Council or Wairoa District Council plus the Hawke's Bay Regional Council and Health Board. Some voters also get to select a member of the rural community board.

For our local council we get to choose a Mayor and councillors, but for the Regional Council and Health board we do not select the chair person.

In both Hastings and Napier everyone gets to vote for the Mayor but for councillors there is a ward or electorate system that effectively allocates some positions to represent specific suburbs. In Hastings these are Hastings city 6, Havelock North 2 , Flaxmere 2 Heretaunga 2 and the farming areas of Kahuranaki and Mohaka 1 each.

In Napier the system is a little different because some positions are allocated to wards and and others are councillors at large.

Six (6) Councillors will be elected at large across the whole city and Six Councillors will from four (4) wards :

Ahuriri 1, Onekawa-Tamatea 1, Nelson Park 2, Taradale 2

Nominations have now closed and but voting will not start until Friday Sept 17th and will continue until the final day of polling in October .

All local government voting is by postal ballot. If you have enrolled on the parliamentary roll, you will be on the roll for local government elections, and every ratepayer is automatically enrolled. For those who are newly arrived in the area or have changed address and are renting, it pays to check you are enrolled if you plan to vote. This can be done at local libraries or at the council offices.

There are no preliminary results though some indication of the turnout is normally announced throughout the voting period. At best only about 40% actually choose to participate, meaning 6 of every 10 do not vote. I will come back to the reasons shortly. Voting is not compulsory.
The councils all use the FPP system meaning the winner is the person with the most votes. Preliminary final Election results are released a few hours after polling closes at 12.00 noon on Saturday October 9th . Though all voting papers must be with the councils before that time, there is a delay of a few days in getting a final, final result because the votes must first be sent to the counting station.

Local councils and the Health Board can have quite an impact on our lives. Just about all the roads are built and maintained by councils, not as some may assume by Government.

Water supplies, sewerage, rubbish, libraries, are all council services, and we tend to take these things for granted. Perhaps the easiest way to think about it, is councils provide all the things we need and use on a daily basis.
In contrast Government tends to do the big things like the police, defense, design the laws, and run the country when dealing with other countries and make welfare payments including superannuation.

Generally council rates take less of our money than government, but rates must be paid whether you earn anything or not so for some people rates are quite an onerous expense. When the people standing for office promise you something you can bet it will cost you.

So voting in local body elections is important.

Now I mentioned a little earlier that 6 out of ten people people don't vote and the obvious question is why not?

My view is it is not because the issues are not considered important but because its difficult to relate the issues to the people standing.

There are no parties so we must choose individuals, and the individuals are just a list of names most of whom we have never heard of.

As a result existing office holders have a huge advantage because their names are more likely to be recognised than new and unknown people.

From a practical point of view the avenues for publicity are limited to leaflets, billboards, and a little bit of advertising.

There are some meetings arranged by third parties but in the case of the Hospital Board and Regional Councillors there were no public meetings last election. This in my opinion is why so many Regional Councillors have been in office for so long, many for seven terms or just over 20 years.

The amount that can be spent is strictly controlled. For community boards its $3500, for Hastings between $7000 and $20 000 depending on population, and for the Hastings Mayoralty $40 000.

In the past voting used to be on a specific day, much like the general election when we choose our Government. As only a small percentage voted it was decided to change to postal voting. The numbers are probably not much different.

When filling out the voting papers it's worth remembers you don't have to vote for every position on the ballot sheet. If you can see only one person that you really want, then you should vote for that person only. If you add additional names you may end up effectively voting against the one person you really want.

Ultimately the thing to remember is “if you don't vote you cannot complain about what subsequently happens”.