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South Waikato Mayor goofs again

Yesterday was an interesting day.

As most NZers will know, we are about to have our triennial local government elections.

Yes, every three years people are invited to cast their vote and select which of the candidates who've thrown their hats in the ring will be re-elected to the positions of councilor or mayor.

Regular readers of this column will know of my own battles with the South Waikato District Council and their ridiculous behaviour that is not only often anti-democratic but also hugely counter-productive and at odds with their stated objectives.

Over the years, millions of people around the world have seen them at their worst via my YouTube channels but this council really doesn't give a damn. To hell with their own reputation and, by implication, the reputation of the district!

So now is the time to force some change and yesterday the current mayor proved just why such change is so necessary.

After berating the public on their Facebook page for simply pointing voters in the direction of information in the form of answering a question that was posed by someone else, the SWDC said "Any form of promotion, campaigning or electioneering on South Waikato District Council’s social media channels is not allowed".

I would strongly challenge the assertion that my response to someone's question was any form of "electionerring" -- a response that did not even name a candidate but simply pointed to a video I'd recently made that included commentary on the fact that candidate's posters were now appearing all over town. I am not a candidate and I am simply reporting on the status of events.

Never the less, the judgement was clearly made by the council staff and so that's fine by me.

However, things got a bit spicy later in the day when the Mayor's council-owned vehicle was spotted in public. The expensive Toyota SUV was plastered with "Vote for Gary" electioneering signwriting.

Now I think you'd have to be an idiot to realise that using ratepayers' money in your electioneering is at best a really bad idea and poor judgement -- perhaps at worst it may even be a breach of the rules.

If Mayor Gary was allowed to use council property to host his re-election material then surely *every* candidate would also be entited to slap their hoardings and posters on council property.

I challenged this situation on the council's Facebook page and my posts were completely ignored.

This is the usual response from the SWDC when caught out -- just pretend everything's fine and hopefully nobody will notice.

Well this time Warwick Lampp, the electoral officer responsible for overseeing this election did notice and Mayor Gary Petley was told to get rid of the vinyls that had been slapped on his council-owned vehicle.

Mayor Gary is not going to be re-elected. He has continuously earned the title of "NZ's Worst Mayor" and seems proud of it. His use of the F-word in a public livestream clearly brought the entire council into disrepute and his refusal to allow independent video recordings of public meetings has also been the topic of world-wide ridicule -- especially when the council's own $20K-per-year streaming service is seen to fail at "convenient" moments when embarrassing events occur in meetings.

I have set myself the task of educating the local electorate as to the promises, abilities and opinions of all candidates in this election and I will be offering a recorded interview with those candidates for public consumption.

Chances are that this will be the most important local body election for decades and I'm hoping that due to my tireless work to educate and incentivise voters it will have the best turnout ever.

Oh the irony for poor Mayor Gary Petley. Until his council decided to effectively ban me from flying at the local airfield, something I'd been doing safely for 20 years, I had little interest in the upcoming election. However, since the council's decision gifted me a whole lot of spare time I figured I'd use that time to help the public in their decision-making.

When Mayor Gary hands back the near-new and rather expensive council-provided car and the other trinkets of office in October and when he has to adjust to living on the pension instead of a six-figure stipend I will have only one thing to say to him:

Carpe Diem folks!

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