New Wellington mayor
Celia Wade-Brown wins a cliff-hanger election
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New Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown was swamped by supporters after biking to work at the council chambers.
The cliff-hanger win, by just 176 votes, was announced by the Wellington City Council this afternoon, after special votes were counted.
After biking into work from her Island Bay home, the green mayor was swamped by supporters at the Wellington City Council chambers.
"It is an amazing and deeply democratic outcome," she said.
"Although Wellington has spoke for a change, it's a very close call, so it's doubly important to involve people and to consult."
She thanked her supporters, her family and her rivals for the top job.
Earlier Ms Wade-Borwn said one of the first calls she received was from Kerry Prendergast, who called to offer her congratulations.
She said she was 'ready to learn a lot and work with the people of Wellington'.
The first thing she planned to do as mayor was to make sure that everyone on the new council had a role to play "going forward."
Outgoing Mayor Kerry Prendergast has said she will not talk to media today.
In a statement she said: ''It goes without saying that I am tremendously disappointed at the outcome of the election. But I congratulate Celia and sincerely wish her all the very best for the huge job she now faces.
After working 12-hour days for nine years, it will be a huge change for me and it will take me some time to get used to it.
I would like to pay tribute to the councillors and staff I have worked with since joining Wellington City Council in 1989, and particularly since I became Mayor in 2001.
There have been disagreements and differing views, but together we have made many bold and innovative decisions that have helped transform this city from the grey bureaucratic town it was into the diverse and exciting place we know today."
"I would like to thank my family, who have had to share me with the city of Wellington for a long time. If there is any consolation to be had, it is in the fact that I can now spend more time being a wife, mother and grandmother."
Ms Wade-Brown will be sworn in as Mayor on Wednesday 27 October.
She beat the incumbent Kerry Prendergast by a total of 176 votes in the end, 24,881 to 24,705 votes - believed to be the closest mayoral race the Capital has seen.
A total of 632 special votes were finally included.
Special votes were needed to separate the two leading candidates for the mayoralty, former midwife Kerry
Prendergast, and Ms Wade-Brown, a keen environmentalist and Green Party member.
Just 40 votes separated the pair after the weekend's local body elections.
Some 963 special votes were originally issued.
Of these, 774 were returned to the electoral office by the deadline of 12 noon last Saturday. A total of 90 special votes had to be discarded because they could not be verified by the Registrar of Electors. Another 52 votes were disallowed because the declarations were not in order.
The Registrar is responsible for compiling and maintaining the electoral roll, only they can determine if a person is eligible to cast a vote.
The Council's Electoral Officer, Ross Bly, says special votes take more time to count as they have to be meticulously processed first.
"We had to verify that all special voters were eligible to vote in Wellington and make sure no one had voted twice. Making sure everyone's enrolled, checking and double checking to make triply sure - this takes a lot of time when you've got almost a thousand special votes to go through," says Ross.
The results for City Councillors were announced on Saturday.
City Councillors elected were: Ngaire Best, Justin Lester and Helene Ritchie (Northern Ward), Jo Coughlan, Andy Foster and John Morrison (Onslow-Western Ward), Stephanie Cook, Ian McKinnon and Iona Pannett (Lambton Ward), Ray Ahipene-Mercer, Leonie Gill and Simon Marsh (Eastern Ward), Paul Eagle and Bryan Pepperell (Southern Ward).
CELIA WADE-BROWN, 54
City councillor 1994-98, then 2001-10.
Born in Paddington, west London, and grew up in a council flat.
Came to Wellington in 1983, lives in Island Bay.
Married with two boys, aged 17 and 19.
Green Party member.
Campaigned to:
Develop light rail, with central government support.
Develop a new cycle and walking lane around Wellington Harbour, from Eastbourne to the south coast.
Clean up inner-city lanes, and get small businesses into them, to encourage more walking and cycling.
Focus on clean technology, including broadband and renewable energy.
Cut red tape for small and medium-sized businesses.
More local community support for libraries and initiatives such community gardens and curtain banks.
A more inclusive leadership style.
- with Stuff
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Time to move the Capital to Auckland. Then the tree huggers can do as they please with Wellington.
peace out prendergast
Looking at what councilor got in you have to wander what ever happened to racial diversity!
@Pippin #56: Just because our mayor chooses to cycle to work doesn't mean we're all obliged to.
Even horses and carts would be faster and more efficient public transport than what we've got now!
She has not got exactly what you would call a sweeping mandate. Lets watch it all go down the toilet.
Is she really going to ride that bike with that little skirt on? I hope she's wearing her best knickers. I'd like to see her bike to work with her gym bag, handbag, laptop and big box of files. Wellington will soon look like Hanoi if we've got to bike to work - some of us take our cars for a reason.
Wellington is well due for a change - good riddance to arrogance, wealth and privilege....
People are sick of the ever-widening income gap and the old-school's bumping-up the prices and having a few more drop-off into oblivion, never to be heard from again.
I have been in Christchurch since before the bus fares went up 1 October. They recently put their fares up and anticipated the GST increase. A passenger pays a first fare for the day of $2.30 from a prepaid Metrocard, and from the time of that fare receipt has 2 hours to make free transfers to complete a journey. If the passenger subsequently pays another $2.30 fare, then she has purchased a day pass ($4.60) and pays nothing more for that day's travel. If she does that each day Mon - Fri she has paid for a weekly pass ($23.00) and is able to travel at no extra charge during the weekend. A month's travel is, therefore, approximately $100.
I come home to Wellington to find from 1 October the $99 monthly pass has been deleted from the published schedule of products (later find out that as a result of adverse public reaction a new $135 monthly fare has been created) and that an off-peak day pass has been increased from $6 (not long since increased from $5) to $9.
What was it that the Commerce Commission was saying about rip-off price increases when GST was increased on 1 October ?
There might be some well-off shift workers getting around, but generally speaking the off-peak fare is used by citizens who are not in-work and generally commuting in order to better their participation in the community and manage their lives and households ... $9.00 per day for their off-peak commuting is prohibitive.
If Christchurch is able to do it, why isn't Wellington ?
We have confidence that newly-elected Mayor Celia Wade-Brown will be able to do something about the runaway cost-plus/widen the income gap mentality of the old brigade.
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Keep us away from Rodney Hide's widen-the-income-gap supercity restructuring.
Just because they are creating a bigger entity, why do they have to pay bigger salaries ... an individual is only able to work to capacity ... should have been doing so before ... and be continuing to do so in the new entity ... if anything, "bigger" should mean employing more people ?
The CEO of the new Auckland super city will be the highest paid public servant in the land ... and then there is his deputy, and the next tier, and the next tier ... all of this happening when we are aware of the consequences of runaway executive pay and bonuses ... and when Phil Goff says that no public servant will earn more than the prime minister (if he becomes prime minister).
It is the corporates that are leading the ever-widening income gap, and all the public service is playing catch-up.
Perhaps Wellington's new cycling Mayor will lower the consumption pyramid created by corporate salaries and bonuses stretching into the millions of dollars per annum paid to one individual and fabrications being carried out in order to excuse the public servants keeping pace.