Doing it my way for a change

BY ALAN CLARKE

Today I am going to get radical. I've decided to be mayor of Nelson for a day. I need only to shake my fingers over the keyboard, wriggle my nose, say something corny like Whakatuzam, and pow ... by the power and magic of words, it is done.

For the next 23 hours and 59 minutes, I award myself unlimited energy, extraordinary clarity of vision and irresistible powers. What fun.

Poof ... my first act is to undergo an instant sex change. Not because I want to wear pretty clothes and outrageous if uncomfortable footwear, or that I feel the mayoral chains were designed to fit around a generous cleavage. Definitely not because I wish to clamber on to any gender-tokenism bandwagon.

However, a region's choice of mayor speaks volumes. I have no issues with any of the four male, white mayors who have served the city for the past quarter-century. We are blessed in having the incumbent's knowledge and door-opening contacts to serve us through what he says will be a one-term transition.

But even dour and desperately conservative Invercargill elected a woman mayor 26 years ago. Eve Poole - she was Jewish to boot - got things done and kept getting re-elected until she died in office nine years later.

Over the past few years Dunedin has swapped an Indian sikh woman in Sukhi Turner for Chinese lawyer Peter Chin. Carterton, as redneck as anywhere in provincial New Zealand, voted in a youngish Maori transsexual in Georgina Beyer as mayor.

So what has Nelson's oft-vaunted creativity and liberalism translated to in terms of those we choose to represent us as mayor? Zip. It's not that some of the women who've put their hands up for the job in recent elections haven't been up to the task (and, magic aside, the city's current deputy mayor will do a terrific job when elected late next year).

Just 13 of New Zealand's 73 current mayors are female, so poof ... I make that 14.

Then, there's the always vexed question of ethnicity. Perhaps I'll become a colourful blend of Tongan, Taiwanese and Te Atiawa woman, so that Nelson can really make a statement. Kapow.

Having got that off my Pamela Anderson chest (and yes, they're all mine, honey, and such a nuisance, especially when it comes to pulling dandelions, jogging or tying my shoelaces), it's time to get on to the real business.

Poof, I'll turn back the clock 50 years to when the council of the day voted on building a town hall at Miller's Acre.

Zap, I'll make sure it's done and done well, saving us all the current angst over paying for infrastructure.

Pow, I'll instruct the architects to design it around a state-of-the-art performance centre, befitting the region's cultural heritage and current and future needs, along the lines of what other regions have enjoyed for decades, only better.

Ponce, I'll return us to the present day. Our splendid town hall-performance centre, located exactly where it should be by the Maitai and at the city's gateway, looks as magical as when it was completed in 1959.

Easy. For my next act, I banish all grumpy old men to Richmond forthwith. I expect them to write endless letters, submissions and blogs criticising, questioning and challenging the Tasman District Council's every move. Here's a sample of the sort of questions I anticipate:

By how much do Richmond ratepayers subsidise those in the rural hinterland?

What would their average rates reduction be if Richmond joined in with the city, just as Stoke did 50 years ago?

What is the "real" rates rise in the TDC - across rates, targeted rates, charges, levies? Why all the smoke and mirrors?

The unprecedented enthusiasm for council indebtedness sees the TDC planning to owe $280 million by 2019 - a whopping $100m more than Nelson.

The population will be around the 60,000 mark by then. Has the council taken into account the greying demograph, which will clearly impact on ratepayers' ability to carry the debt burden?

How much wriggle room is left for contingencies - pandemics, biosecurity disasters, rising sea levels, unexpected government regulations, surging interest rates, yadda-yadda?

Its current debt is significantly higher than it was projected to be 10 years ago. What assurances can it give that a similar blowout - beyond the planned 250 per cent increase - won't happen between now and 2019?

Ahem. Switching tack. When will it rewrite its code of conduct to deal with the representatives of major lobbyists also serving as councillors? How can a chair or executive member of Grey Power, for example, possibly be an objective member of the council team and consider impartially the lobby group's own submissions?

Ditto NCC on this one, but I'm giving it a break for a change. I could go on, but I'm supposed to be having fun.

So, bippity-bop - I hereby declare the establishment of the Nelson Bays Licensing Trust. All pubs, bars and licensed retail outlets are now under the control of a local trust, with the profits retained within our borders and spent on community facilities.

Boom. I also declare the creation of a new regional visitor tax. Anyone arriving or departing from the city on public transport will be pinged an extra five bucks (locals exempt). Now we've got a real development fund to play with.

Someone wants a new rowing venue, motorsport facility (the noise wowsers are sure to be on the case at Lansdowne Rd any time soon), Olympic-size public pole-dancing gym? Make a case and it's yours!

As for the Suter gallery - I hereby order DOC, the police and justice departments to, politely, bugger off. I'm claiming Albion Square as an art, cultural and heritage centre. The polytech can expand there. The museum and its storage and research facilities can reunite on its hallowed grounds. The Suter can become as big and bold as it wants, without impinging one square centimetre on the Queen's Gardens poopy old duck pond. How lovely.

There's so much more I could do, but my time is up.

For my last act, I declare Nelson to be an unnecessary negativity-, unwarranted criticism- and unsubstantiated innuendo-free zone. Instead, it is to be a veritable paragon of positivity. Poof.

- © Fairfax NZ News