Nelson takes a step back in time

It was like a morgue when I walked into the pub on election day, despite the presence of 100-plus people and umpteen kegs of delicious beer.

Everywhere you looked, slumped shoulders and deep frowns signalled a sense of despondency and defeat.

People’s heads lolled forward over their pints. Hands patted backs in commiseration.

Dark jokes were made about leaving the city and moving somewhere new, but no one was laughing. We were too stunned.

What was happening to our beloved Nelson? Our local council had just taken a violent swing to the right.

Even now, a fortnight after the local body elections, I still feel lower than a barnacle on a submarine.

Not only did the election return a mayor many believed divisive and disingenuous; the rest of the council was suddenly top-heavy with rumpty old right-wingers who hadn’t had a creative thought in decades.

Only half the city’s eligible voters bothered to vote; those who did were mostly disgruntled conservatives who used their democratic right to endorse a Great Leap Backwards, back to the days when the only issues worth worrying about were law and order, keeping rates low, and building more roads. To pinko liberals like myself, it was painful and perplexing. I suddenly felt like a stranger in my own backyard. It was as if I’d gone to bed on the eve of the election in one NZ’s most progressive provincial towns, then woken up in Timaru in the 50s.

One road to rule them all. In the end, it all boiled down to one single issue that has been festering in Nelson for decades: a plan to push a State Highway through two of Nelson’s poorest suburbs, past schools and kindergartens, effectively cutting the city in half, so that traffic would no longer clutter the picture postcard waterfront views of the rich.

The Nelson Mail noted ‘‘the outcome can only be interpreted as a strong endorsement of the southern arterial roading link, supported during electioneering by the mayor and all five newcomers’’, and the new council ‘‘has the musty appearance of councils from yesteryear: white, male and older’’.

Yes. And even though I’m an older white male myself, I’m disappointed that so many crusty relics are now running my town.

Over the past six years, the previous council made great progress on long-stalled cultural and environmental projects, improving river water quality, forging ahead with a ‘‘city to sea’’ pathway and new cycle lanes, rebuilding the local art gallery and music school.

The vast majority of these projects were initiated by progressive council members, but sadly, most have now been replaced by tired old plodders whose single Big Idea, in these days of global warming and dwindling oil supplies, is to bisect the city with a noisy, expensive and unnecessary road previously vetoed by the Environment Court because of air pollution concerns.

It’s going to be a very long three years.

The

noted the new council ‘has the musty appearance of councils from yesteryear: white, male and older’.