Community is everything, says Brooks

Cynthia Brooks says she hasn’t been shy about her retirement from local government, as she hopes it will encourage people to stand at this year’s election.

The Marlborough District councillor has spent three terms serving the Wairau Awatere ward, calling it nothing but a ‘‘privilege’’.

‘‘[In] my original flier for my campaign in 2013 . . . my comment to my community was that I would be their voice on council,’’ Brooks said.

‘‘I’ve kept, I hope, true to that. In other words, I didn’t go in with any personal agendas or personal ambitions.

‘‘I was there to channel what the needs of the community were into the council.’’

At the last election Brooks announced she would retire, but she changed her mind at the last minute.

‘‘I had thought to myself, ‘Enough is enough.’ I was 67 and my husband was moving into retirement,’’ she said.

‘‘But at the end of the day, through my middle term at the council, we really had built a strong, great culture.

‘‘It turned out there was a person in my ward standing down, and two or three others, and my heart really was [set] on seeing that we carry on that culture.’’

She said she had no regrets about making the decision to do another three years.

Her highlights over the years had included seeing Seddon get treated water, her work on the small townships committee, watching the library get closer to completion, and the new senior housing units set down for George St.

‘‘The library has been hugely rewarding to see that to fruition, because I was also one of the councillors who decided against that being built in favour of the Seddon water being put right first,’’ she said.

‘‘Seddon water was one of my platforms I stood on, seeing the treatment plant built. I think we had about two years to pull it off, or the government subsidy would have been pulled from it.

‘‘We’ve delivered some really cool projects out to smaller communities who have previously been overlooked in terms of making nicer places to live. I like that process because it’s grassroots up. The council doesn’t go in and say, ‘We’re going to do this for you.’

‘‘Instead we go to the community and ask them what it is they would like to see.’’

Of course, there have been challenges, Brooks said – such as within the first few weeks, all the way back in 2013, when she trained to become a Resource Management Act commissioner.

‘‘My intent had always been to go on the assets and services side of council. However, I was persuaded [that] because of my journalist reporting past, and my ability to process and question all the things that you need in that role, to consider this.’’

When she first stood, the East Coast had just experienced a ‘‘massive earthquake’’, only to be followed by the Kaiko¯ ura quake a few years later.

‘‘Seddon, particularly, was a community in my ward that I had a huge heart for and spent a lot of time in over those first months of being on the council, because things were still having to be worked through,’’ she said.

‘‘I think that’s been the hardest thing. Because I could come home from a meeting in Ward or Seddon to my home, [but] I was leaving people in caravans and with homes they couldn’t access. It just tears your heart out.

‘‘However, that’s the thing. We knuckle in, sort out the issues and work with staff and the community, and with all of the other agencies, to help people bring their lives back into some sort of shape again.’’

Brooks said her advice to any new councillors would be to ‘‘never forget’’ they were there to represent the Marlborough community.

‘‘If someone like me can step into this role and stay at it for nine years, and still really enjoy it and feel like you’ve accomplished something, then anybody can do it.’’

Brooks said her hope for the future was that they could encourage more young people to pursue a seat at the council table.

‘‘The barriers to that are that it’s supposedly a part-time role, it’s a salary role, but on the basis you have a business behind you, you are fully retired, you are comfortable and can spare the time,’’ she said.

‘‘It’s not structured so that it’s easy for younger people to be around that table. I’d like to see that change.’’

Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.