Mayor’s first task: repair relations
Repairing relations between her council and the community and between council staff and councillors will be the first task for new Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise.
The cracks in these relationships have been evident for some time but they have widened in recent years with the furore over the consultation, or lack of it, in relation to the city’s war memorial and more recently the aquatic centre project, which is the subject of a judicial review.
Then there’s the chlorination of Napier’s water supply, and the discoloured water that seems to spew out of some residents’ taps with monotonous regularity.
Neither has pleased the ratepayers. Nor did the somewhat outlandish proposal for a velodrome.
Capping everything off was the recent revelation that council staff had been spying on the Facebook pages of councillors opposed to the pool complex in a bid to catch them breaching the council’s code of conduct.
Wise won the mayoral contest with an old-fashioned thrashing of her nearest contender, former National minister Chris Tremain, beating him by more than 8000 votes.
Under Wise’s new regime, the days of not listening to ratepayers are over, she says.
‘‘Certainly, the biggest overarching thing is working on our consultation processes as a council and actually having a far more engaged relationship with our community. I have a lot of ideas about how to achieve that.
‘‘We need to talk to the community first, not last. We come up with the ideas internally and then go out to the community and try and sell it to them. That’s not the way I’m going to operate,’’ Wise said.
She will also tackle the council’s poor internal culture ‘‘because I think everyone recognises that we have some issues at the moment and that’s definitely something that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible.
‘‘That’s something that will get fixed under my watch.’’
Today she will be contacting the re-elected mayor of Christchurch Leanne Dalziel, who shares her scepticism that every drinking water supply must be chlorinated, and seeing what can be done about removing chlorine from the system.
The city’s war memorial and aquatic centre are also on her radar.
‘‘I’ve got a 100-day plan. I’ve been working on this for, well, three years in reality, but certainly over the past year, I have been putting down on paper what those key priorities are.’’
She would not say who she would select as deputy mayor but said she had a person in mind.
In Hastings yesterday, reelected mayor Sandra Hazlehurst was attired in a pink blazer nearly as bright as her demeanour.
She is bristling to get back to the council table. ‘‘It’s amazing to be re-elected ... I hardy slept a wink last night because I’m so excited about where we’re going and what we’re doing,’’ she said.
‘‘We have three new councillors and I’m very excited about the fantastic balance of diversity, gender and experience.’’