Coin toss leads to a busy year
AYEAR ago, Glyn Lewers chose heads. It was an historic moment for the Queenstown Lakes District Council, a coin toss to select the final member of the Queenstown Lakes District Council after both Cr Lewers and AJ Mason ended up tied on 2183 votes following a recount in the 2019 local body elections.
Mr Mason, who picked tails, ended up the shortestserving member of the council in its history.
Cr Lewers, meanwhile, went from looking at future investment in infrastructure to cope with the seemingly everincreasing number of tourists flocking to the district, to being part of a council which, almost overnight, turned into a social agency.
‘‘I probably went into council with my eyes open — I knew what was happening in the community but when Covid hit, that was a watershed.
‘‘It was chalk and cheese what we had to deal with.’’
In 2019, 2,392,976 passengers moved through Queenstown Airport — that was a 7% increase on the previous 12 months.
The latest passenger report, for August, shows a 61% drop in passengers for the month, yearonyear, to 86,157, every single one of whom was domestic.
The council went from grappling with visitor growth to helping the district survive without any visitors at all.
Queenstown Lakes Mayor Jim Boult vividly recalls the moment he was informed the district had its first case of Covid19.
It was March 14, about 3pm, when Mr Boult’s cellphone rang, and showed the caller as Southern District Health
Board chief executive Chris Fleming.
‘‘That was one of those shock moments that I’ll probably remember forever, as was the prime minister’s announcement . . . that we were going into lockdown.
‘‘The fact that we had a Covid case in the district, that was the ‘my God, we’re in for a hard time’ moment.
‘‘I guess the indications from government were not good and everybody figured something drastic might happen, but I don’t think anybody — or not too many people — ever thought we’d go into complete border closure and a lockdown.’’
The thriving resort quickly turned into a ghost town.
‘‘On a couple of occasions during lockdown I had to go into town . . . it was like something out of one of those zombie apocalypse.
‘‘I was almost waiting for tumbleweed to go down the street.’’
Mr Lewers said one of the most remarkable things about that period was how quickly the council, and its staff, swung into action.
‘‘How the council staff stood up — they pretty much became a social development agency within five days.
‘‘In the middle of that storm, I still cannot get over how they did that — they just switched on.
‘‘I don’t think people realised how hard they worked.
‘‘I’ll give my props to Jim [too]. I don’t know how he did it.’’
Soon an Infometrics report was commissioned, based on a ‘‘do nothing scenario’’ which painted a sobering picture, predicting unemployment would hit 20%.
Mr Boult said while it is difficult to gauge accurate numbers, about 600 people across the district are collecting Jobseeker Support payments.
There is an anecdotally large population of unemployed migrant workers, but exact numbers are not known.
However, the worstcase scenario appears to have been avoided.
Mr Boult credited that, in part, to organisations such as Destination Queenstown and Lake Wanaka Tourism whose staff ‘‘rolled their sleeves up, got into it and made the most of a bad situation’’.
‘‘Despite the fact we haven’t got international markets, most operators around town now are able to keep their nose above water on a domestic market — it’s going to be tough, noone’s going to make any money, but I think the majority will survive.
‘‘Our situation is better than we figured it would be — that’s not just because we took our feet off the pedal and let the market take us where it wanted to, we fought very hard.’’
On the housing market, there were early predictions the ‘‘bottom was going to fall out’’.
‘‘We got that wrong.
‘‘Housing, it has firmed up, if you like — the highend part of the housing market’s gone crazy — some pretty expensive sales, the middle market’s holding up well, the only thing that has dropped is the price of rentals.
‘‘That just reflects that we’ve lost a lot of migrant workers in the community.’’
Cr Lewers said Covid19 had also forced a redo of the council’s longterm plan, which would result in some projects being deferred and others dropped.
‘‘At this stage, it’s just trying to manage what we can do within the constraints we’ve got.
‘‘There are some pretty hard choices to make at the moment and we’re still working through that.’’
If there was a positive to
Covid19 for the community, it was work on the Queenstown town centre upgrade and arterial routes — projects requiring significant capital injections — now under way thanks to the Government’s ‘‘shovelready’’ fund.
It had also reaffirmed the need for the district to diversify its economic base from tourism.
A ‘‘regenerative recovery group’’ had been formed and four sectors had been identified to pursue further — technology, the film industry, education and medical tourism.
Mr Boult said work was happening behind the scenes and several proposals were under consideration.
‘‘But shifting an economic base is a bit like turning the oil tanker around, it take a fair old while to respond to the helm.’’
Both men said the priority for the next 12 months was to make sure the community continued to support each other and for the work done over the past eight months to be progressed.
‘‘I think we’re at the end of the beginning is probably the best way to say it,’’ Cr Lewers said.
While he sometimes thought about how different his life would be now if the coin had landed on tails, he said that ‘‘when I really think about it, I’d rather be in this seat, helping make decisions, than standing back and looking at what’s going on’’.