Gastro crisis mayor thought of quitting
Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule says he considered resigning after last year’s Havelock North gastro crisis.
The admission came during a valedictory speech at Yule’s final council meeting before he takes unpaid leave to contest the general election as National’s Tukituki candidate.
After 15 years as mayor, Yule has said he will resign on August 28, a month before the election.
He told councillors at yesterday’s meeting that last August’s water crisis – which made more than 5000 Havelock North residents sick – was ‘‘the hardest time in my career’’.
He said he ‘‘had some pretty deep discussions with myself about accountability ... including resignation’’, but decided to stay. ‘‘What I decided was the best way I could help the community was to fix the shortcomings that had been found, and today they’ve been signed off.’’
At the meeting, the council approved $12 million for upgrades to its water network as part of its Annual Plan for the 2017-18 financial year.
Yule admitted there would be ‘‘some political risk’’ from the crisis as he campaigned to replace Craig Foss as National MP for the Tukituki electorate, which includes Havelock North and Hastings. His Labour opponent, Anna Lorck, has adopted water issues as a key platform of her campaign.
On a lighter note, Yule said one of the challenges of being mayor was the temptation to take personal credit when none was due.
‘‘Somebody will ring you and say the water is leaking out of my drive. It’s been there for three weeks and nobody’s done anything about it. And then that afternoon they ring back and say: ‘You’re amazing. It’s all been fixed’. Now, you have the choice of whether to tell them that you have not done anything.’’ Yule said one of the ‘‘highlights of bureaucracy gone completely wrong’’ was when he and the council spent days defending the actions of a staff member whose car was photographed straddling two disabled car parks at Wellington’s Kilbirnie swimming pool in 2015.
The council would have avoided significant negative publicity ‘‘if we’d just simply said that person shouldn’t have been there, it’s a disabled car park’’, he admitted.
He will also stand down as president of Local Government New Zealand – a role he has held for nine years – when the organisation holds its annual conference next month.