Kaikōura picks Marlborough

By Kira Carrington / Local Democracy Reporter

The Kaikōura District Council has voted to join Marlborough — but now the question is, does Marlborough want them?

Kaikōura councillors decided they want to amalgamate with the Marlborough District Council at an extraordinary council meeting on Wednesday.

Councillors voted 6-1 in favour of Marlborough, with only councillor John Diver favouring North Canterbury. The meeting was attended virtually by Marlborough council chief executive John Boswell and council staff.

Marlborough mayor Nadine Taylor told Local Democracy Reporting she was “very pleased” the proposed merger had a “clear mandate” from the Kaikōura community.

“There's nothing worse than uncertainty for a council or a community, and this gives them... certainty of direction,” Taylor said.

“I think [the decision was] a very positive statement on their part, and I think it does create some exciting opportunities for both Marlborough and Kaikōura to come together as a stronger east coast region.”

Kaikōura had been in amalgamation talks with both Marlborough and North Canterbury councils Hurunui and Waimakariri as part of the Government’s Head Start pathway, which gave councils until August 9 to present their amalgamation proposals.

The Government wants to whittle down the country’s 78 councils into a smaller number of consolidated local authorities, and has offered councils the opportunity to propose amalgamations under the voluntary Head Start framework ahead of wider reforms.

Kaikōura District Council corporate services manager Peter Kearney told councillors that the final results of a community survey showed 56% of the 549 respondents favoured an arrangement with Marlborough, while 40% favoured a North Canterbury arrangement.

Meanwhile a similar survey was done in Marlborough where 217 people submitted. The council was 70% of the way through the responses. Of those 151 responses, 34% were in favour, 54% neutral and 11% were against.

Kaikōura mayor Craig Mackle said he was voting to join with Marlborough because of the simplicity of combining two councils, versus combining three North Canterbury councils and establishing their own regional functions after the dissolution of Environment Canterbury.

“Tourism to me was a key player, we get far better results north than we do south,” Mackle said.

“I love the calmness [of the] north as opposed to the absolute mayhem south at present. I know it’s supposed to be long term, but I'm struggling to get past that.”

Councillor Corrina Smith said that while she was “all for Canterbury” as a born Cantabrian, she thought Kaikōura would be better off with Marlborough.

“I feel more aligned with Marlborough,” Smith said.

“There's a lot of talk about getting lost. I don't think that'll happen with Marlborough. I do think it will happen with Canterbury.”

Councillor Joshua McInnes cited economic reasons for his vote, saying Marlborough’s GDP was “far superior” to Waimakariri’s despite a smaller population.

“I think money talks and I [saw] the employment, there's 6000 more people employed in Marlborough.”

Councillor John Diver said he favoured North Canterbury as they had more natural catchment boundaries with Kaikōura, and it fit with the Government’s vision of three unitary councils across Canterbury.

“Waimak[ariri] and Hurunui are growing ... it'll help spread the cost of the rates,” Diver said.

“Marlborough is stagnated population-wise, we’re only going to add on 5000 people to it.

“The fear of having to help fund Marlborough Sounds road repairs, which are worse than ours, and all their roading — I’ll be voting south.”

Kaikōura chief executive Will Doughty said that now the district had a Head Start partner, he would delay a lot of general council business so he could divert resources to drafting the amalgamation proposal.

“The two focuses have to be the [flood] recovery work, and the Head Start proposal and we'll fit everything else in around that.”

“The hard work starts now.”

Doughty said he would be looking into whether the Government would give Marlborough and Kaikōura an extension to the deadline given disruption from last week’s flooding.

Taylor said she had received a call from Mackle after the meeting, and an email had been sent to Marlborough’s councillors, informing them of the result.

Taylor was pleased Marlburians would have a clear option to consider as the council moved to its second round of community consultation, she said.

“We needed to know what the Kaikōura community wanted, so that we had something to respond to.”

“[Now] we're clear in our next steps with our community, which will be that we're going back and engage with the Marlborough community to understand what they think about... merging two into one.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.