October 11, 2010
The voters have spoken. Geoff Collett tries to make some sense of what they have said about the Nelson City Council.
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Perhaps the most difficult - or pointless - exercise in the wake of a local body election is to try to look for some kind of coherent motive in the way people have voted.
A remark at the weekend by one Nelson Mail journalist summed up the problem: she told of how people she knew had voted for candidates because they liked their names.
It's that sort of random approach - a variation on the days when candidates with surnames starting with A or B polled highly because they were at the top of the old alphabetised voting papers - which makes speculating on the whys and wherefores of the poll so fraught.
Adding to the murk this year was, in Nelson City at least, an extraordinarily crowded field - 39 individuals vying for either the mayoralty or a council seat, encouraged by six vacancies on the council (with five councillors departing and the sixth, Aldo Miccio, making his all-or-nothing bid for the mayoralty).
A fractious sort of election campaign, stoked by those campaigning on the city's arterial roading issue, might have fed the sense that city voters were ready to wreak great change upon their council.
They didn't. Far from it. Setting aside the mayoralty, every councillor who wanted their seat back got it. And then the voters went looking for some old councillors to bring back into the flock - Paul Matheson, the mayor who stood down three years ago; Mike Ward, who last sat at the council table in the 1990s; and Eric Davy, who was voted off in 2007. Even Alan Turley - trying for a third stint on the council after first being elected roughly around the last Ice Age - nearly squeaked back in.
Other noteworthy points included Jeff Rackley's arrival on the local body scene - surely a sign that many Nelson people both knew and liked his name - and Rachel Reese's staggering share of the council vote.
She may have missed out on the mayoralty to Mr Miccio, but her high-profile campaign there obviously helped her hoover up a councillor vote from 60 per cent of everyone who voted across the city. Her share of the preliminary total was 10,376 - at the last two elections, the top-polling candidates didn't break the 8000-vote barrier.
The overall result is what has become the familiar nature of Nelson councils: a slightly weird blend of greys and greens, with an overall - and pronounced - liberal streak; a healthy dose of the earnest; probably a couple of lightweights; and the odd reactionary.
The median age has slipped down a bit thanks to the arrival of Ruth Copeland (44) and Kate Fulton (38).
The council remains defiantly white, however - two of the three Maori candidates finished at the tail end of the overall pack.
What matters, of course, is what direction the new council chooses to take - and, especially in the short term, what deals Mr Miccio does for senior roles.
Ian Barker's time on the margins he occupied under Kerry Marshall is surely over, and he is presumably in for a suitable reward for his pre-election alliance with Mr Miccio. But various other key personalities loom large, Pete Rainey and Ms Reese most notably, but also Mr Matheson - who, despite being the bottom- polling councillor, will know more about the game than most of his new colleagues. And with such capable women as Gail Collingwood and Ali Boswijk to consider, the gender equity question will - or should - hang heavily for Mr Miccio.
The new mayor has his own ambitious agenda to pursue, including a vow to do some budget hacking. Then again, most of the old council - just - which approved the budgets and rate rises of the past three years is still in office.
As for two of the big, hairy issues this council will have to confront, only four of the new council (Mr Miccio, Mr Barker, Mr Rackley and Mr Matheson) put their names to the Waterfront Association's prominent advertisements in The Nelson Mail supporting building a new road through Victory. Others have either kicked the question into touch, or don't favour new roads at all. And might we see a revival of talks with Talley-owned Rutherford Holdings over a conference centre partnership?
Meanwhile, before he is forgotten, a final word about Kerry Marshall's demise.
Many explanations could be offered: his low-profile campaign; the way he managed his nomination, after initially vowing to be in the job for only one term, then refusing to be drawn on his intentions, then announcing he had changed his mind; maybe his age (70) was unattractive compared to the two younger front- running candidates.
Maybe, as one conspiracy theory has it, he was only there at others' urging, to steal votes from Ms Reese and so stop her getting the mayoralty. Or, as others speculated, he stood again at the mayoress' behest.
Probably some voters considered his performance in the past term as less than stellar. And maybe others just didn't like his name.
* Geoff Collett is the Nelson Mail's features editor.
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