Connections and local body elections

By Ken Russell in All Sorts

Ken considers the role of our new mayors and councillors.

Local body elections have taken on a higher profile over the years, and with it the public scrutiny of councillors, particularly mayors. Take the result of last weekend's nation-wide voting for mayor in the four main centres. The point is being made that were it not for a seismic intervention in Christchurch that turned the wisdom of pollsters on its head five weeks out from election day, New Zealanders could have woken last Sunday morning to find all four sitting mayors deposed by a groundswell of dissatisfied ratepayers wanting change. Let me share a personal reflection.

In another time and place my father was a mayor, and some of my teenage memories arise from a home where Dad, and sometimes Mum, were out in the City doing what mayors and mayoresses were expected to do. Dad enjoyed himself no end, happily dividing his time between the mayoralty and the family business. Not a problem. Being mayor was never going to change his style, totally accessible, and hopelessly unsophisticated. Like as not he walked two or three city blocks to the Council Chambers, and on occasions rode a bike. No mayoral car, his private vehicle a shabby V8 Ford which doubled for every purpose under heaven.

As I remember it, mayoral responsibilities were less complex than those we see bearing on modern mayors. Councils rarely strayed beyond the provision of core services, works, electricity, parks & reserves, and a handful of civic amenities, and for these the city ratepayers coughed up their due share with likely no more good grace and humour than their counterparts today. The difference was only that civic debt of the kind that bedevils local government today was simply not even dreamed of, nor would it have been tolerated.

The Mayor was paid by honorarium, which Dad declined. He simply said he didn't need it - to the outrage of his mother-in-law. He had the view, even then perceived by many to be old fashioned and unnecessarily self effacing, that civic service was a calling and a privilege.

Dad came to the mayoralty with policies, which he pursued with tenacity. I well remember three. His crusading zeal was for fluoridation, as controversial then as it is now, but less proven. He was crucified a hundred times for it, but his city was one of the first in New Zealand to introduce fluoride into the water as a public health measure. His second passion was for a free library service, ironic from a man who in my memory read little more than council papers and the evening newspaper. In his time the local library became free. Thirdly, he saw fulfilled a dream that the City would provide low cost pensioner housing, and to this day a block of modest Council-owned flats bears his name.

I have indulged this foray into my father's mayoral past because it serves to highlight the kind of Mayor he was. While he never stood on a party ticket, he made no secret of his left leanings. He was a mayor of the people and for the people. He was more at home with his sleeves rolled up pitching in to a community working bee than extending the niceties of a civic welcome to a visiting dignitary. Dad had the common touch, and his plain and unembellished approach to the office won him consistent strong majorities throughout his long years in office.

Mayoral responsibilities have escalated a hundred-fold since my father's time. Mayors of even modest size cities preside over multimillion-dollar businesses, and central government's devolution on to local government has compounded the task out of all proportion. The bigger the city the greater the stakes, and the mayor must carry the can for everything - huge capital expenditure, ever escalating rates, and the necessity, or otherwise, of an expensive burgeoning bureaucracy to oversee it all.
So what do modern people want in a mayor? A man skilled in business and adept at politics? Oddly, our four main centres could be telling us otherwise.

In Auckland Len Brown convinced the voters of the new great city that his record of identification with the hopes and aspirations of the multi ethnic people of Manukau was a preferable CV for the man they wanted as the super mayor; not a man who in own words was a proven performer ln big city politics.

In Wellington, by the narrowest of margins they have dislodged a proven technocrat in long term Mayor Kerry Prendergast, perceived to have hitched too much of herself to the business of Local Govt NZ . In her place a newcomer, a "political nobody" to lead the capital, a Greenie with people appeal.

In Christchurch they discovered belatedly, courtesy of a 7.1 earthquake, that their own Bob Parker has warmth and compassion for the people they had never discerned in him before. Their mayor came down from his ivory tower and joined them amidst the rubble. He shared their pain and they gave him their trust.

In Dunedin their sitting mayor was a respected solicitor, singer and entertainer. But respect was not enough. The people perceived he and his Council had not listened to their cries, and loaded them with perpetual debt. All it needed was a relative unknown, Dave Cull, a man of some common flair, to promise to unite a fragmented city, and the people rose to support him.

I rather respond to the assessment of commentator Chris Trotter who wrote in last Tuesday's Press. "Right across the country there is a growing sense of disconnection between ordinary citizens and the people who govern them. For democracy to work voters need to feel their communities are being run by people committed to serving their interests. More importantly, they strongly believe that big changes - the sort that have a big impact on their day to day lives - should never be made without their consent."

Is that, then, the verdict of the local body elections? I suspect it is. 'Connection' is a NOW word with powerful contemporary relevance. And so it should be.

--Ken Russell

This item was first printed as a Connections article in the Parish Weekly Bulletin, Oct. 17, 2010.