[As published in Summer 2025/26 BayBuzz magazine.]

As the popping of champagne corks become a distant memory for Hawke’s Bay’s three freshly minted Mayors, questions remain about whether they can fulfil the promises they’ve been voted in on. 

Will Hastings Mayor Wendy Schollum be able to carry out her mandate of affordability first, while at the same time growing local jobs and the economy? 

Will Napier’s Richard McGrath be able to achieve his assurances of lower rates? 

And will Central Hawke’s Bay’s Will Foley be able to prioritise people’s views when ratepayers want everything for nothing? 

Two of the three Mayors were voted in on a change agenda but for all of them it’s increasing challenges that will test those campaign mandates, from water reform to rates capping to RMA reform. 

S&P Global Ratings emphasised this when it recently published a report on Government’s Local Water Done Well reforms. S&P’s credit analyst Anthony Walker summed up the reforms as “not the silver bullet that some people thought”. It promises flexibility but creates uncertainty. 

While Labour’s reviled Three Waters allowed for balance sheet separation between new water entities and councils, Local Water Does Well does not. 

Instead, a water organisation’s debt under LWDW will become part of each council’s credit profile. The Local Government Funding Agency, which will provide the money, is demanding councils guarantee loans in half of the financial options available to councils. 

None of which comes as any surprise to Will Foley’s predecessor, Alex Walker. She served three terms as Central Hawke’s Bay’s Mayor, but also played a key role for what passes for regional governance here as a founding member of the Matariki Governance Group. As well, up until the elections, Walker was the Local Government NZ’s rural sector chair. 

Walker believes that LWDW is “unfair and unaffordable the way that it is”. 

She says “all smaller councils are going to run out of options very quickly” with the scheme’s economic regulators being forced to determine how unaffordable it is. 

“They don’t really want to talk about ‘affordable’ – they don’t like using that word,” she says,” But the reality is they’re going to be confronted by having to deal with it.” 

In the wake of the region shouting a loud “No!” to amalgamation ten years ago, Walker has been a strong proponent of its next best thing, regionalism. However, the problem with it, she says, is that “we want it to be everything” incorporating incongruous notions of efficiency, collaboration, autonomy, and identity. 

But, Walker says, of all the issues facing local government in the region, RMA reform will be the trickiest because of the “unfunded mandate” aspect to it where central government instructs local government to impose higher regulatory standards, but then doesn’t fund and resource them to do it. 

And there’s a cost to that. “We’re going to do RMA this way, then we’re not. Then we’re going to do it this way. Every time it changes it costs.”

However, the former mayor applauds RMA Minister Chris Bishop’s intent to employ more standardised zoning rules but says “it can’t be just a big plan that comes from the centre. It has to be a big plan for the region which fairly and adequately describes the whole 145,000 square kilometres of the Hawke’s Bay region.”

Ratepayers, heartily sick of years of double-digit rate increases, will be focused on Local Government Minister Simon Watts keeping his promise to cap rates, even if National’s coalition partners Act and NZ First have queried it.

A recent RNZ-Reid Research poll found overwhelming support for the move, at 75%. Walker believes the legislation will be passed. 

“It will happen,” she says, “I don’t actually think there’ll be a material effect.”

“You won’t see rates come down,” she contends, “And you possibly won’t even see rates increases slow down because the language the Government is using is about core services. And Hawke’s Bay councils are already pretty good, largely at the focus on the core services stuff.”

“It’ll cause political and community debate about what’s core and what’s non-core and some angst-ing over it.”

Walker earnestly waves the flag about the region having “really good building blocks” when it comes to regionalism, but this is contradicted on closer examination of the workings of the Matariki Governance Group. 

This unaccountable organisation, made up of the region’s mayors, the HBRC Chair and iwi representation, has no legal mandate under the Local Government Act, which means its only obligations are to those who established it and not ratepayers. 

Which was why last year MGG was able to make dubious unilateral decisions, under a seeming cloak of secrecy. 

It commissioned a review into itself and its adjacent organisations with a Hastings District Council staffer, called the “Review of Regional Structures Report”.

This allowed MGG to reconstructure the Regional Economic Recovery Agency by effectively dismantling it, so that the Regional Recovery Agency could be back-ended into it by April 2026, when crown funding for the RRA ends.

Saving the high-paying jobs of some came at the expense of others, however. REDA’s CEO and Board resigned immediately, frustrated by MGG’s lack of direction and communication. 

When BayBuzz queried Walker about this political sleight-of-hand, her response was to promise that, “there will be a far more interactive relationship between MGG and the governing bodies of the members”.

No mention of being transparent with ratepayers who are funding this attempt at regionalism with MGG apportioning that responsibility to the individual councils. 

So, what would make MGG accountable in a regulatory sense?

“Potentially Resource Management Act reform might give it some, and some Local Government Act reform might as well,” Walker says.

Matariki’s next step is ready, she declares, but it’ll take “humble leadership from the mayors and chairs” along with some committed resource. 

“If we strangle the goose by not giving it some resource, it’s certainly not going to lay any eggs,” Walker says, “And so we actually need to give it a chance.”

But the question remains; if those providing the resource – us ratepayers – are continually left out of the process, what faith can they have in that process when access to MGG’s decision making is difficult-to-access at best, impenetrable at worst?

After all, without transparency there’s no accountability and without that there’s no trust.