Tag Archives: Politics

Here, Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!

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Fish stocks in Hawke Bay are getting so low local recreational fishers have had to resort to using some drastic measures:

As part of the tri-annual “Election Promise-fest”, New Zealand’s governing National Party said they would establish “Recreational Fishing Parks” in the inner Hauraki Gulf and the entire Marlborough Sounds – banning commercial fishing from operating in those areas.

I was in the car with talkback radio on an hour or so after the policy was announced and callers’ reactions, like a school of kingfish sensing a big pot of burly in the water, were fast and severe.

The most common bite the promised bait received was “It won’t make any difference as there isn’t really any commercial fishing in those places as it is!”

Sounds like their plan hit a bit of a snag.

The day before he announced this plan Prime Minister John Key was in Napier to attend the All Blacks vs. Argentina game at McLean Park. As part of his visit he spent some time schmoozing with party faithful at a bar in Napier’s party central-come commercial fishing port, Ahuriri.

In such an ideal location I think Mr Key missed out on a great opportunity for local votes by not announcing his “Recreational Fishing Park” plan here and including in the plan a body of water very close and dear to our hearts – Hawke Bay!

Fish stocks in Hawke Bay have been in decline for some time. Catching fish by surfcasting or kon-tiki from the shores around Napier is proving more and more fruitless. Many recreational boat fishermen I know don’t even bother going out on the bay much any more either, as the number of fish they catch has gone down almost as fast as the price of fuel for their boats has gone up, making it no longer worth the effort or cost.

Hawke’s Bay Sport Fishing Club, along with Advocacy group LegaSea, conducted a study into recreational catches in Hawke Bay over an eight year (fishing is best over the summer here, so the results covered December-February) period.

14,744 anglers recorded over 115 days of fishing competition how many fish (the survey included five species: snapper, gurnard, tarakihi, trevally and groper) they caught. The results were based on the number of fish per angler, per day and ranged from a high of 2.23 gurnard per angler, per day in 2011-12 to a low of 0.006 groper the same year. The average fish per angler, per day over that 8 year period works out as 0.654 – that’s just over half a fish per person, per trip. It’s hardly worth it!

The low fishing stocks hurt the local business as much as the anglers, as there is an estimated 2,000 recreational boats in the region at a total value of around $83 million. Add to that $28 million of fishing gear and over $10 million in fuel, maintenance, fuel etc. and recreational fishing has an estimated value of at least $121 MILLION to Hawke’s Bay’s economy!

Commercial fishing operations, by comparison, are actually expanding! While most big operators in the region fish outside of Hawke Bay – mainly out towards the Hikurangi Trench and beyond, it is not uncommon to see commercial boats operating within the limits of Mahia Peninsula and Cape Kidnappers. I have even seen commercial fishing boats regularly running a couple hundred meters offshore along by Hawke’s Bay Airport. You can guarantee they are catching more than 0.654 of a fish – That’s just not fair!

So, Mr Key. I understand you’re visiting Napier again today (Thursday 18 September). Your local MP’s have been rather ineffectual in the region despite claiming they are “Backing the Bay”, so let’s see if you can do any better. Add Hawke Bay to your list of “Recreational Fishing Parks”. Ensure the conservation of our region’s salt water fish stocks. Keep our recreational fishermen and fisherwomen happy with tight lines and bobbing rods. Make sure a pastime worth hundreds of millions of dollars to our region doesn’t end up floating belly-up in an empty Hawke Bay.

Hawke’s (and Hawke) Bay deserves better!

*In Breaking News*
There may be further reasoning to making Hawke Bay a “Recreational Fishing Park” as Ministry of Primary Industry agents swooped on a local fishing business after it appeared their in-shore catch records were substantially less than they had been recording as exporting.

The Bill & Yuley Show

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punch

Aw geez… Here we go again!

Last week Hastings District Council released a promotional campaign they had been working on, along with Business Hawke’s Bay, Food Hawke’s Bay and HB Winegrowers called “Hawke’s Bay – Great Things Grow Here”

The scheme is designed, we were told, as a resource to attract businesses to move to and trade with our great little region – Hawke’s Bay. There was only one slightly major flaw – Hastings apparently didn’t ask anyone else to be part of this “Hawke’s Bay Region” promotion. In fact, if you like what the scheme offers, the only “Key Contacts” on the website are Hastings District Council, Business Hawke’s Bay, Food Hawke’s Bay and HB Winegrowers. No one else. Not Napier City Council. Not Hawke’s Bay Regional Council – no one!

This concerns me. Not from the perspective of HDC going at a project like this alone, as HB councils have been doubling up on ideas and services for years, but that BHB, FHB and HBWG (all based at the EIT Campus in Napier) happily went along with it. Business Hawke’s Bay is tasked with the economic development of the WHOLE Hawke’s Bay Region. So why didn’t anyone sitting in their Napier offices say “Um, hey, shouldn’t we involve EVERYONE in this?”

Hastings Mayor, Local Government New Zealand Chairman and staunch Hawke’s Bay amalgamationalist, Lawrence Yule further stoked flames of antagonism by saying:

“Until there has been a change in approach in Napier City Council we will never do any of this type of stuff with them” (But later claimed this was meant in a “historical sense”(???))

“Our council made the decision to just get on and do it.”

He might as well have said “It’s MY amalgamated Hawke’s Bay Empire and if you don’t play by MY rules, I’m taking bat and ball and going home!”

Naturally, Napier Mayor and equally as staunch ANTI-amalgamationalist fired his own shots back on his blog and in the local paper, claiming “Great Things Grow Here” was produced in secret and all part of Yule’s amalgamation plans.

Yule refutes this – saying: “Preparing this video has absolutely nothing to do with any push for amalgamation. It was simply to help businesses in the region, to get more jobs and to help us market ourselves in getting those businesses.”

But his approach and reasoning seem quite flimsy.

If he was indeed intent on promoting ALL of Hawke’s Bay as a great location for business to relocate surely he would have involved ALL of Hawke’s Bay local bodies, promotional agencies and a few businesses, rather than focusing on how it could benefit just his own council.

By going it alone in this project Yule has merely exacerbated the problem and perceived lack of coordination and cooperation between HB councils, playing up to the concept of an amalgamated Hawke’s Bay council being the panacea for all such issues. He needs to put old ideologies, rivalries and grudges aside and work in the here, the now and for the future of the whole Hawke’s Bay region.

If Hawke’s Bay is to pull itself out of its current doldrums, successfully evolve into a regional economic success story and move into the future, it can’t be with all this one-upmanship, sniping and negativity between its leaders.

It’s tit for tat. It’s schoolyard squabbling. It’s pathetic and it’s harming Hawke’s Bay.

IF there is to be any form of Hawke’s Bay amalgamation in the future (and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger “if” and more and more distant future), surely neither Napier nor Hastings’ current mayors can be part of it, or certainly at the head of it if current attitudes and agendas continue.

Meanwhile we ratepayers just keep paying their wages…

Napier, Hastings and ALL OF HAWKE’S BAY deserve better!

So I Was Right All Along??!!

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"Where are we going, Wilbur?"

“Where are we going, Wilbur?”

So it’s finally over. “Berties Buses” are no more. Sold off for a paltry $1,250,000 less than the whole sorry saga cost Napier ratepayers.

Is it any wonder Napierites are baying for blood and demanding Mayor Dalton and all his fellow councillors and staff from the previous term who signed off the dud deal pay ratepayers back?

But, as the MTG saga showed, there will never be any accountability, responsibility or blame taken within Napier City Council, will there? No-one has ever done anything wrong at NCC – “It’s because we have got one or two extremely vocal critics who are stirring the thing up” says Mayor Dalton.

Well, Bill, I’ll happily take credit for being one of those critics – Because you know what? I was right!

I said the buses were a silly idea back in 2011 when they were dreamed up. Their construction, delivery and resulting repairs were a farce in 2012 and in the (2013-14) year they were in operation, virtually no-one used them! – “The poor drivers must be beside themselves – because no-one else is!”

And yet, just as Mayor Dalton’s predecessor pointed the finger of blame for problems with her museum at those capable enough of seeing and reacting to problems much quicker than she and her council could, Mr Dalton blames the critics?

Am I happy the buses are gone? No! Because they were such an elongated, obvious waste of money from the outset – they should never have been allowed to go ahead!

Rather than once again pandering to fly/cruise-by-night tourists, imagine what $1.3 – $2 million could have done for developing projects and initiatives for Napier’s youth, who get blatantly ignored, or community development, or even encouraging economic development in the city!
These are projects and people that call Napier home ALL YEAR ROUND – Not just in cruise season, not just during the holidays, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR – Napier projects and funds for Napier people!

Rather than trying to develop Napier into a city embracing the future and evolving into a new technological and business powerhouse, the council long ago shackled itself to the past by clinging to historically-based tourism as the city’s saviour and in doing so indentured its economy and people into tourist servitude.

I’ll keep critiquing gaping faults like the Deco Buses because I love my city! I want to see it succeed. I don’t want to see it waste its time, money, people and resources on follies like these buses.

Napier deserves better!

Why Live in a Shoebox When You Could Live in Napier?

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The latest trend in NZ big-city living! (Please note: accomodation pic is actual size)

The latest trend in NZ big-city living!
(Please note: accomodation pic is actual size)

There’s been a fair amount of coverage of / promotion of tiny houses recently.

I can’t help but wonder how much of it is “Hey, that’s a neat idea – living in a caravan / container / kennel” and how much is an almost subversive attempt to phase out the classic / idealistic NZ “1/4 acre (albeit more like 1/8th acre these days) dream” mentality and make living in a tiny house or shoebox apartment seem more normal or acceptable?

To me, these tiny houses seem to be a move towards something between the old “workingman’s hut” of the depression era, Japanese “capsule hotels” and human “battery farms”.

In New Zealand we are very fortunate to have the amount of space we do. Heck, we have room to spare!

New Zealand is geographically bigger than Great Britain, but with only a tiny portion of the population and huge, uninhabited swathes of the country still covered in native bush / farmland / epic, majestically mountainous movie-background terrain that would give the most sure-hooved chamois vertigo.

So, when the inevitable comments focusing on the housing crisis and massively inflated prices in Auckland, Christchurch and (to a lesser extent?) Wellington once again come to the fore as reason for such close-quarters accommodation in New Zealand’s biggest cities, it raises a major question in my mind:

“Why must business in New Zealand still be SO main-centre focused??”

With the rise of E-commerce and so much business internet-based, why does it still “need” to be based in our main centres, exacerbating the high demand / high price problem, while regional cities, like my own home town of Napier, have been struggling to attract skilled workers and businesses in recent years?

• The average (full-sized, with a yard) house price in Hawke’s Bay is somewhere around $350,000 – $500,000 – a third to a quarter of those in Auckland.

• We have the infrastructure, including UFB network access, to easily operate a national / international level “E-business” from Hawke’s Bay.

• With its smaller population (more room, less congestion) and wonderful natural features encouraging healthier, outdoor pastimes, Hawke’s Bay has a relaxed lifestyle second to none!

Yet where is all the commercial and business development focus?

In New Zealand’s main centres 🙁

Managing Accountability at MTG

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Capture

The question is often asked “What planet do politicians live on?” In the case of Hawke’s Bay’s local body politicians the answer must be “Planet Teflon” – as nothing ever seems to stick, especially accountability.

From storage space shortages, to wildly inaccurate consultants’ reports on projected visitor motions (pun intended); things did not get off to a good start for Napier’s revamped cultural and historical hub – “MTG”, or “Museum, Theatre, Gallery”.

Now, after another council-commissioned consultant’s report – The “McDermott Miller Report” has been released into just what went wrong, where, how badly and how it could be fixed.

I have read the report and it makes pretty good, common sense. Perhaps its only down-fall is that it cost Napier rate-payers the equivalent of New Zealand’s average annual wage to tell them what a Napier ratepayer on the average wage could have told them after a visit or two to MTG.

After a flurry of publicity and changes in the last couple weeks, I now understand that Napier City Council announced they will not be blaming, firing, or holding anyone accountable for MTG’s much-publicised failings.

REALLY??

NO-ONE???

In fact, the council appears to have taken a “move along – nothing to see here!” (Inferences like that will NOT help visitor numbers, by the way) approach. Napier City Council’s new CEO Wayne Jack even said he was “tiring of the barrage of criticism” being levelled at MTG.
My advice to Wayne in helping avoid such situations is simple:

HOLD SOMEONE ACCOUNTABLE!

Not to be outdone, former Napier mayor, Hawke’s Bay Museum Trust chairwoman, acting trust general manager and MTG project champion, Barbara Arnott has already identified who is to blame – saying she “believed the whole MTG issue had been blown out of proportion by some people who had expressed their feelings and opinions without “thinking it through”.” in the local newspaper.

Of course, how silly of us – it’s all the rate-paying public and fact-quoting media’s fault! What an absolute load of imperious rubbish!

I was saddened not to hear or see any rebuttal from Hawke’s Bay Today Editor, Andrew Austin, supporting his reporters or readers / online commenters on such a ludicrous statement to what is a very public issue.

In the real world, when things this big go this wrong, people lose their jobs. MTG is currently going through a round of staff redundancies as a result of their current review. If MTG’s marketing department had indeed ignored a large portion of the community as potential visitors because of their socio-economic status, as McDermott Miller claims then, yes, heads certainly need to roll – A region’s culture and history is made up from everyone’s input, so no-one should be exempted from being able to view and appreciate it. But you can’t help but feel that deeper problems, well out of the control of staff, have not been accurately accounted for.

How are Mrs Arnott and former NCC CEO and MTG project manager Neil Taylor, despite their deep involvement in MTG’s development, apparently completely free from criticism or accountability?

Current Mayor, Bill Dalton says he “did his apprenticeship” under Arnott and the majority of the current council is unchanged from the one led by Arnott for so many years, so there is doubtlessly still a sense (or burden) of loyalty there.

But there appears to be far less love between current council CEO Wayne Jack and his predecessor – Jack having to tidy up a number of messes left over from the previous regime in his first months in office. In fact the way in which Jack does a number of things is a complete reversal to Taylor’s modus operandi, so it would not have been too surprising to have seen Taylor being “Thrown under the Art Deco Bus (another of his projects)”, But no – no accountability there either

Come to think of it, any and all past and current Napier city councillors involved in committees for and voting on MTG’s errant planning and enactment have somehow escaped any and all responsibility or accountability for some very expensive mistakes that are very embarrassing to Napier.

How is that fair?

All this MTG publicity couldn’t come at a worse time for the “Friends of MTG” programme, as they are in the middle or their annual membership renewal programme.

My wife and I are “Friends of MTG” and have been for a number of years – so any “conflicts of interest” claims that those mentioned above have completely avoided will doubtlessly now be levelled at me…. 🙁

I and a number of my fellow “MTG Friends” think for all its faults MTG does indeed have a lot of unfulfilled potential – it’s still a bit of a “blank canvas” if you will. But we also want to see those responsible for some major errors held accountable for their actions.

What do other “MTG Friends” think?

I would expect this year’s membership numbers depend on it.

Napier, its history, present, and future, its art and culture deserves better.

Horsepower Needed in Hoofing Berties Buses

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I see Napier City Council have decided to divorce their trouble-plagued, ill-conceived Art Deco Buses and sell them after barely a year in service.

They plan to stop the service in May and sell the buses to try and recover some ratepayer money.

I think NCC may have already missed a great opportunity to get the people of Napier a good price for “Bertie and Barb’s Busted Buses” by not hocking them off even earlier than May.

With Hastings’ annual equine event attracting so much publicity, attention and so much money from a very affluent sector of society, surely the last couple of weeks would have been the best time and place to sell vehicles with massive price-tags that are so used to having only a few occupants:

"Where are we going, Wilbur?"

“Where are we going, Wilbur?”

Welcome to #GigatownNapier!

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GIANT

Welcome to #GigatownNapier!

For those who are unaware, “Gigatown” is a competition being run by Chorus over the next year or so.

The winning city / town of will receive:

“The fastest internet in the Southern hemisphere – Chorus will make a special one gigabit per second (1Gbps) wholesale service available in the winning Gigatown at a special price and a Gigatown development fund – a $200,000 fund provided by Chorus and Alcatel Lucent’s Connect will support entrepreneurs and innovators taking new services over Gigabit fibre to market for Gigatown.”

I’m all for Napier becoming the first city in the southern hemisphere to have gigabit internet speeds. I can see just how much of a benefit our city and region could gain from such a digital asset. At the very least it is a way to engage, employ and empower Hawke’s Bay’s technologically-savvy youth and maybe even keep some of them from leaving the region in droves as they currently do.
At the most, it can put us at the forefront of the digital world and create massive financial, employment and social gains for our region. That’s why I’ve become a “#GigatownNapier ambassador.”

HOW the competition is currently structured leaves me more than a little cold, though.

The first stage of the competition is all about getting as many people to “hashtag” (“#Gigatown(insert location here)”) your town’s Gigatown handle on as many forms of media as inhumanely possible.

This can, of course, backfire with lots of people getting tired of seeing or using the Gigatown hashtag very quickly – social media is, after all, a very fast moving, trend setting (and following), constantly changing and fickle.

It all seems a little “Spam-like” to me (although there are rules and guidelines to help avoid this).

Currently leading the “#Hashtag Section” is Wanaka – where a simple ham sandwich from a lake-front cafe can set you back a whopping $10 (this was what sticks in my mind from the last time I was there), with almost 70,000 points. Oamaru, the “Steampunk” capital of New Zealand second (I’m pretty sure Steampunk technology isn’t internet compatible, though) is second, 37,000 points behind.

Napier is 14th

There are, apparently, conversion factors to be taken into consideration here – towns with smaller populations (like Wanaka and Oamaru, for example) appear to get more points per capita / hashtag, than bigger population centres. But this will start to even out as the competition proceeds, so we’re told.

Under this basis, let’s all just hope the likes of Otira don’t get too involved, or they’ll smoke the lot of us!

All the hashtag noise has also been a bit of a distraction from recent problems Chorus has been having with the government and the Commerce Commission over “unbundling” and the rolling out of New Zealand’s Ultra-Fast Broadband (“UFB”) network.

It has been interesting to note, too, that while the promise of gigabit internet speeds has been raising a lot of interest, the usage and uptake of “the next big tech thing” – Ultra-Fast Broadband in New Zealand has been a pretty slow. Despite the government and providers strongly promoting the use of UFB and installing the infrastructure for it around large portions of metropolitan New Zealand over the past few years, it has been gaining momentum only recently.

Rather than making the most noise, I’m all for the winning town being the one with the most substance.

Napier deserves an opportunity like this.

We have the port, airport and roads facilitating the transit of goods – export being our biggest earner and the servile tourism industry being a big portion of the region’s economy, but a poor earner for those involved.

Inject gigabit internet technology into Hawke’s Bay and I think we could foreseeably overtake at least one of those sectors. In doing so we would also massively increase the number of skilled workers, increase the wages, in doing so local boost consumer spending and launch the region’s economy into the stratosphere.

Regardless of what happens in the competition, whether Napier becomes #GigatownNapier or not, I still think this is a great opportunity for Napier and Hawke’s Bay.

I went along to the first that Napier “Gigatown Education Seminar” hosted by Ryan Jennings and I was impressed by the passion and drive I saw and heard from everyone at the event to see this sort of thing happen for Napier.

For too long Napier has been chained to the past. Over recent years I have felt we are just out of reach of that one thing that will get Hawke’s Bay out of its current economic doldrums. This is a great opportunity to thrust ourselves through the present and into the future.

Be it with Gigabit internet speeds, or with Ultra-Fast Broadband, this is a great step in the right direction and an opportunity that cannot be wasted!

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Tie(rd) of Petty Political Distractions

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noosetie

Question: Does it truly matter if a City / Regional / District councillor wears a tie or not?

Answer: No!

Hawke’s Bay’s local authorities saw reasonable levels of change thanks to the recent elections. Not great, but reasonable.

Voters elected new councillors who they hoped would ‘stick their necks out’ on issues, rather than leave them as the last thing the public saw just above the sand (or other orifaces).

They voted in people whose necks could look left and right to see both sides of an issue. Look forwards to guide us into the future and backwards to help us avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, rather than staring in the same old direction that habit, instruction or sycophancy had seized their predecessors’.

So why has such a big deal being made in local media about what three male regional councillors do or do not place around their aforementioned cervical appendage?

I don’t care what our councillors wear or how they wear it. I care about what they DO as councillors for my city and for my region.

The publicised actions, attitude and decisions of Regional Council Chairman Wilson over recent years have given me little reason to have any faith in him as a representative of the Hawke’s Bay region, let alone as any form of men’s style guru. He should leave that to the experts – Chairman Ralph Lauren and Councillor Tom Ford, perhaps.

I wish the likes of Hawke’s Bay Today would get their focus and reporting back on the matters that have an actual bearing on the present and future of our great region.

Far bigger, more important issues currently hang around Hawke’s Bay’s neck!

No More Babies for Napier?

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NHC

From the middle of December 2013, Napier’s population will cease to grow organically. You may be “Napier bred”, but you won’t be “Napier born” – because Napier Medical Centre’s maternity wing is closing.

If you are expecting a Christmas baby and were wanting to have your birth in Napier – even if your name is Mary and your partner’s name is Joseph, there will be no room at the Inn.

For those of you who follow my blog, you will know this is of particular interest to me, as my wife and I are expecting our first child very soon. It looks like our baby may be one of the last to be born in a Napier maternity facility.

I had heard a murmuring from a fellow expectant parent and went investigating. HBDHB staff would, naturally, not reveal anything to a mere member of the public like me, but a medical source confirmed to me that the maternity side of the Napier Health Centre would close around the second week of December. That’s pretty short notice and even worse news if you are well into your pregnancy and wanting to have your child in Napier like generations before. If you want our gorgeous hometown on your child’s birth certificate, you may have to look at having a home birth.

The closure of Napier’s maternity wing, and indeed the whole Napier Health Centre has been bandied around for some time. Now it looks like they are becoming, at least in part, a reality.

It’s claimed more Hawke’s Bay women have been choosing to have their children at Ata Rangi (Hastings / Hawke’s Bay Hospital’s maternity unit). But it appears not many people know Napier actually had its own maternity facility!

With over 2000 births per year in Hawke’s Bay (that’s five births every day of the year), we surely need all the beds and maternity services we can get. So why close one?

Hastings’ maternity unit often runs out of room and will move Napier mums and their newborn babies to the Napier Health Centre to free up space. So what happens without this back up come January?

With so many births, new mums we have talked to who gave birth to in Hastings say they often felt shunted around and put through the system as fast as economically possible.

I call it being “Hatched, matched and dispatched.”

A woman we attended antenatal classes with was looking at having her baby at the Napier Medical Centre, as her mother had experienced very short labours – between half an hour and 15 minutes from “whoa to go” (or from “go to ‘Waaaah’!” technically) and there was concern she would have the same issue. Without facilities in Napier, what will happen in cases like hers? A birth certificate that reads “Born: Meeanee Over-bridge”?

Is it acceptable? HELL NO! So what can we do?

Protest! Make some noise! Vent your spleen!

Our local MPs, Chris Tremain and Craig Foss constantly claim to be “Backing the Bay”, but seem timid and sycophantic to the will of their party masters on big, local issues (can you say “Napier-Gisborne rail line”, “Amalgamation”, or “Ruataniwha Dam”?) Email or ring them. Call them out and challenge them to actually do something and “back the Bay’s babies” on this one. Chris was born in Napier, by the way, so why can’t your child be?

Minister of Health, Tony Ryall may even be worth a tune-up.

If the Right side of the political ledger fails to do anything (and I’m not holding my breath), Stuart Nash seems to have Napier’s best interests at heart and a determination to see them through.

Write, text or ring the Hawke’s Bay Today (who I hoped would have been onto this sooner), or the Dominion Post / Hawke’s Bay Sun (email: news@dompost.co.nz Hastings ph: 870-7802; Napier: ph 834-3700) – Where local news fails, national attention can work wonders!

This is utterly unacceptable and should not be allowed to happen!

This is not parochialism – it’s civic pride!

I love Napier more than I could ever hope to fully articulate. It is my place of birth and my home. I see no credible reason why others won’t have the chance to say “I’m Napier BORN and bred!”

My Vision for Napier

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I would have loved to run for Napier City Council this election, but I just can’t afford to.

There is a limit put on how much you can spend on a local body election campaign. As an “at large” candidate (what I would have gone for), I would have been able to spend up to $30,000. I don’t have that sort of cash to spare. EVER. That’s a crazy amount of expenditure to me – it’s around ¾ of my annual household income. Heck, with rent, bills and all the rest, I couldn’t even afford the $200 nomination fee!

If I REALLY wanted it, I was told, I would have hustled, borrowed and begged to get the money. But that’s not my style. As I’ve said before, I’m not keen on owing money, especially when it can lead to potential influences on matters further down the road. Politics is riddled with such cases. Idealist, I know, but I’d like to do be in council for the many, not the money.

It’s a shame, really. Not only does the council miss out on my wisdom, ideas and youth (three concepts completely foreign to the current mob), but it also leaves the door open to these silently sycophantic incumbents. A council should be an accurate reflection of its constituents – old and young, white and brown, rich and poor. It’s a shame that just the old, rich and white options have held power over Napier for so long. I think this lack of representation has taken its toll on our city.

Contemplating running for council has given me some good ideas for blog topics and did spark some great debates on Twitter.

A Twitter friends kept asking me for my vision for Napier, so here you go:

If elected would have aimed to:

• At 35 I would have brought a younger viewpoint to Napier City Council, with fresh ideas and solutions to issues facing our city based on a life born and bred in Napier.

• Bring more council focus onto Napier’s youth. Each year hundreds of young, talented people leave Napier for education or work, often never to return. We need to not only retain these youth, but make Napier a more attractive option to other younger generations for living, learning and working in.

• Move the promotion of Napier beyond the Art Deco obsession of the past. Our city has so many wonderful, diverse aspects. Why focus on just one?

• Focus less on tourism and more on Napier residents. Cruise ship passengers visit our city for only a day in summer months, while Napier’s residents are here all year round. Let’s celebrate them and create events and activities for their benefit!

• Make Napier a more attractive location for high value, well-paying businesses to set up operations in. The current agricultural and tourism / hospitality-based employment focus has not helped our economy with its low wages and will not help the region’s moral through the flow-on effects of low incomes. Hawke’s Bay needs to work smarter, not harder.

• Work to ensure a greater transparency in council operations and decision making. Currently too many meetings are held behind closed doors and feature the words “Public Excluded”, keeping those who ultimately pay for the results out of the process.

• Make council decision making and processes more available and open to the general public by web-streaming council and committee meetings, so those who can’t attend can still keep an eye on matters that interest them.

• You can’t have transparency without accountability. Currently, elected councilors are not allowed to publicly criticize, or interact too much with council-employed staff. You can vote out an underperforming, long-standing councilor, but you can’t vote out a similarly entrenched manager. All sections of Napier’s City Council need to be held accountable for their actions (or inactions as the case may be).

For now, all I can do is hope that some fresh blood gets elected into NCC in October and they can institute at least some of the ideas I expressed above.

In related election news, I was disappointed to read that two more too-long-standing councilors are once again seeking re-election:

Hastings Deputy Mayor, Cynthia Bowers is seeking a 7th term, yes, you read correctly, SEVEN TERMS! If successful, she will have been a HDC councilor for 21 years! That’s longer than your average university student has been alive!

In Napier, Councilor Faye White is seeking a fifth term, not quite as bad as councilor Bowers , but can anyone tell me what Faye has achieved in her 12 years on NCC? Because I don’t know! I’m not sure if any of the general voting public does. Four terms in power is a heck of a long time to gift to someone for no major or obvious results.

The downside of such nominations, is once you are nominated you can’t withdraw, except for serious medical reasons. Knowing the poor track-record of local body election voting in Napier (less than 50 percent of registered voters actually voted in the last three elections!) It’s highly likely these councilors will retain their seats.

It’s enough to make me wish I had the money again…