Hauraki District Council Mayor Toby Adams is “extremely happy” to have secured seventh place for the second consecutive time in a nationwide poll assessing local government leaders.
The poll was conducted by Curia Market Research for the NZ Taxpayers’ Union, and was conducted in a series of random monthly polls of 15,000 adult New Zealanders.
It asked the question: ‘How do you rate the job your local Mayor has done since the last election? Has it been very poor, poor, average, good or very good?’
Forty per cent of respondents from Hauraki said Mayor Adams had done a good job, placing him at number seven – within the top ten – of Mayors nationwide.
“Staying seventh means that I’m consistent, which is all I can ever ask for,” he told The Profile. “It just reaffirms that I am doing the right things day to day.”
With the local body elections coming up in October, Mayor Adams – who is vying for a third term – said the timing of the results reaffirmed his efforts to be “as good as I can for as many people as I can,” despite what could often be a thankless task.
“There’s only so long you can read negative comments or have people swearing at you on the main street, or just calling you out, encroaching on your private space… It’s always going to happen, and at some point, it’ll annoy you or get to you.
“But we’re lucky because we’ve always had really good support from council. We always look out for each other. So, while [the poll] singles myself out as the Mayor being in the top, there’s an amazing team that I get to work with – the elected members, plus the staff at council – that help you get to that position.
“While it names one person,” he said, “it’s certainly not a single accolade for one person.”
Thames-Coromandel District Council Mayor Len Salt was also listed in the Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll, coming in at number 20, with 30 per cent of respondents ranking his performance as good.
Waikato District Council Mayor Jacqui Church was ranked 29th, with 23 per cent of her respondents responding positively.
Matamata-Piako District Mayor Adrienne Wilcock was ranked fifth in the poll. While 37 per cent of respondents said she’d done a good job since the last election, just seven per cent said she’d done a ‘poor’ job.
The ten least popular Mayors were: Gary Petley, South Waikato; Vince Cocurullo, Whangarei; Tory Whanau, Wellington; Wayne Guppy, Upper Hutt; James Denyer, Western Bay of Plenty; Ben Bell, Gore; Janet Holborow, Kapiti; Nobby Clark, Invercargill; Andrew Tripe, Whanganui; and Jamie Cleine, Buller.
BY KELLEY TANTAU