The mayoral race for Napier is on, with three candidates throwing their hats in the ring. Incumbent Kirsten Wise is standing again, along with two current city councillors Nigel Simpson and Richard McGrath.

At the same time as their respective campaigns are kicking off, survey results show that residents’ overall satisfaction with the council is tanking, falling to 42% in 2024/25, a ten-year (and record) low, down from 61% the previous year.

Confidence in council leadership has also dropped from 49% to 31%. People are less satisfied with some services – swimming pools, town planning, animal control, parking and management –while other services remain highly rated – including sports fields, rubbish collection and playgrounds.

The recent $4 million refurbishment of the Napier Aquatic Centre led to temporary pool closures, which may have affected scores, but the investment will deliver another 8-to-10 years of good community access to this service.

The survey was commissioned by the Napier City Council itself – continuing a practice that has been in place since 1992, where the Council annually seeks resident feedback on its performance. 

Mayor Wise said the results were not a setback, but a “call to action”, citing overall financial stress – including a near 20% rates increase last year—as contributing to dissatisfaction.

According to the NCCs pre-election report, the city’s external debt is currently sitting at $65 million, but is forecasted to grow to $342m by 2033/34, driven in part by a long list of capital infrastructure projects. 

The largest of these is the combined cost of water infrastructure upgrades and compliance, projected at $701 million through to 2034, followed by $98 million for the Civic Precinct development, which will deliver a new library and community facility, council chambers and redevelopment of the old library tower into office spaces. The office tower is budgeted at $45.6 million and the library and council chamber design and build at $52.4 million.

As incumbents, all three candidates must share the burden of ratepayer ire, but arguably as mayor Wise is the most visible. All are certainly under pressure to convince voters they can improve the outlook for the city. The trio are facing a ‘tough crowd’, as they say. Who has the answers to spiraling rates and what do voters want council to prioritise?

Kirsten Wise

Wise, to her credit, lead through two incredibly tough and life-changing events: Covid and Cyclone Gabrielle. No mean feat for any mayor, and she did so with calm and confidence, which she cites as reason for her reelection.

“I feel I have produced results in the six years I have been mayor. I’ve delivered clean water. I’ve restored our War Memorial. I’ve driven cost savings – $7 million in this year’s annual plan. I’ve set up a new investment company so that we can actually find some different types of income other than rates. I’ve championed Māori wards. I’ve fought alongside our community to save our overnight health services, as well as leading through the 2020 floods and recovery. Now more than ever we need stability and not disruptions.”

Working against her is the fact that she has been at the helm through this period of exponentially rising costs. This is one of the biggest arguments for amalgamation, which was a key question that BayBuzz put to candidates. Saying the ‘people have spoken’, Wise says that she is focussed on strengthening collaboration and extending shared services across councils.

“We do work together closer than we ever have historically and we have a number of initiatives that include civil defence, waste management, economic development, some joint procurement initiatives and we share some staffing and resources across councils. That is what I am committed to at the moment because that absolutely helps to reduce duplication, save costs, and deliver better outcomes for residents in Hawke’s Bay.”

On the question of rates capping, her views have shifted a little to a tentative ‘maybe’. She says she would consider exploring a rates capping model that allowed the council to fund central services sustainably and give the community confidence it wasn’t spending on ‘nice to haves’. 

On the contentious issue of water metering, Wise says there are a number of benefits from finding and fixing water leaks and the behaviour change and conservation that user awareness can bring. It’s a decision that is likely to be made by the move into a regional water services entity, which will take responsibility for whatever charging model the city adopts in the future. 

Simpson also supports water metering, but challenger McGrath says if it’s about conservation, then council should start with education, and if it’s about water loss, then council should sort out its leakage problems before thinking about billing others. He also criticised the set-up cost. 

Wise is up front about the fact that it will be expensive – in the region of $25 million. The funding, which is entirely from the ratepayer base, is built into the LTP and earmarked for 2029.

“It’s balancing the cost and also having that long term view of how the community would be better off if we understood our consumption,” she says. In a region where ‘water security’ is a hot issue, Napier’s system leaks about 22% of its water, while per capita water use is over 500 litres per person, way above the national average (277 litres).

Unlike her two challengers, who oppose them, Wise firmly supports Māori Wards and says her views have been strongly influenced by the two consultations the council has been through when it established them. 

The split between supporting and not supporting them was pretty close to 50/50, she says, and the reasons given for supporting Māori wards were “more substantive and reasonable” than those not supporting. Those opposed often misunderstood the issue and thought it meant Māori would get more than one vote, or that it would cost ratepayers more, neither of which are true, she says.

“Māori wards provide an opportunity for fair representation, and it strengthens Māori voices in our decision making. They bring a long-term intergenerational view to the table, and it also aligns to the approach to Māori seats in central government. I don’t understand why we would want to shift from being different from that model.”

Summing up, Wise says, “My focus has been on making sure our community remains resilient and forward moving. I am not here for the short-term wins, which sometimes means there are some difficult decisions. But I am here to ensure that our city continues to thrive for generations and that is why I have decided to throw my hat in the ring again.”

Richard McGrath

Richard McGrath says council should be focused on the areas where there have been the biggest vulnerabilities. He questions how council projects have been prioritised.

With his background in St John’s Ambulance and nursing, his instinct is to not run away, but towards problems, he says.

“I guess I’m saying to people, post our flooding, Covid and the Cyclone, our priority has been a library, a regional park and a council chambers. I would have thought coming off the floods our priorities should have absolutely been storm water, drinking water and sewerage. We still had water restrictions in Napier in mid-April (2025). We have got less water bores available now than we did five years ago almost, on the grounds that if we turn on water bore C1, we’ll get dirty water straight away.”

McGrath wants water to be the focus of council spending.

“We’re smack in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis with the low socio-economic status we have here, and we don’t seem to have batted an eye lid [after the Cyclone]. I absolutely 100% agree that we need a library, but from what I understand it’s going to be $58 million. South Dunedin has just done one for $22 million, and Christchurch is doing one for $32 million. When you put things in perspective it just doesn’t seem quite right. Can we do things differently?” McGrath asks.

When it comes to the new water entity that Napier has voted to join, he is not sold.

“Our water is no worse than anyone else’s around the country,” he claims. “During the cyclone most people could flush the toilet and get water out of the tap. With the water entity, is it just councillors getting out of their core responsibilities? Why would you not want to own your own water if you are a councillor?”

“Now we’re saying we need to spend $700 million in the next 10 years— $70 million a year. But we are struggling to spend $22 million and deliver outcomes. So how do you suddenly triple that? The workforce just won’t be there to do it, especially with these works going on all over the country. These are big ideas – but that’s all they are. It’s easy to spend the money but it’s what you achieve in the end.”

McGrath thinks water managers just want councillors “out of the picture” on water decision-making and a CCO puts councillors at arms-length, with less influence.

Other gripes include ballooning council staff, which has jumped from 350 in 2013 to 600+, he says, and the planned Waka Hub, which has become a $5.5 million project. “Every other club and organisation funds their own and this is 100% funded by council.”

“How many people have we got working on regional parks that we don’t need until 2040? Maybe we need to sit back and ask ‘what’s our job?’ before the government does, and which they are getting closer to doing. What levels of service do our community want to pay for?”

McGrath’s voting record backs up his conviction that things are upside down. He voted against the last LTP and this year’s Annual Plan because he didn’t think projects had been prioritised appropriately.

“The fact that we haven’t prioritised water, it’s not that we couldn’t do it. We haven’t chosen to do it. Back to basics, water, roads, rubbish and civil defence should be the priorities.”

Nigel Simpson

Nigel Simpson is running on a promise of good financial management and governance – with a CV to back him up. He’s a member of the Institute of Directors and has a Master’s in Business Administration. He says councillors and voters need to be much more strategic and longer-term in their thinking. 

“Local government has over the last couple of decades taken on a lot of extra activities that historically haven’t been funded by rates and that is what has accelerated the pressure on rates,” he says.

He doesn’t believe in rate-capping and says really it should come down to good budgeting.

Further, he wants to completely overhaul the Long-Term Plan and, in the process, recatergorise council projects into three baskets to set the budget.

“The stuff we must do by law, in other words, we have to do it and our only choice is what level of service we provide. The second part is stuff that councils do because nobody else will, but again we have to decide what is the level of service, and if we are doing it by default, do the ratepayers want us to be doing it. And the third part is stuff we do by choice. And those are the things where you can separate them out of the budget and put it to the community and say, ‘Do you want us to be doing these things?’. If the community come back and say ‘no’, then the reality is those things immediately come off the rates bill.”

He also believes council must establish proper cost matrices for its projects and salaries, to benchmark them against national trends and ensure they are delivering similar outcomes. 

A rates cap would be a risk for a city like Napier because it is already in the lowest quartile for rates in the country, he says. Depending on how central government applied a cap, it could limit the ability to raise rates to meet important council objectives.

“You don’t need a draconian system, you need logical, pragmatic people sitting around the table and saying ‘Why is this activity accelerating in cost above what other providers are providing it at?’ That’s called prudent governance and fiscal responsibility.”

That means not kowtowing to popular demand to lower rates and allowing council to do what needs to get done, he says.

When it comes to the proposed Regional Park, however, Simpson does see the need for the council to protect the Ahuriri Estuary. He acknowledges the toxins and liquid waste that ends up in the estuary as a result and is supportive of riparian planting of the network of city drains to help “wash the bad stuff out”.

However, at the same time, he says, “The problem is that we haven’t got clear science about how much space we need to do that. The other issue is that Napier has a very small geographical footprint – that piece of land could be a significant return on investment for the ratepayers if we turn it into an environmentally friendly urban development.”

Simpson proposes an alternative concept to alleviate the volume of contaminated stormwater entering the estuary and cleaning what ends up being pumped into the Bay. This would involve diverting storm water from southern parts of the city to the cross-country drain, and reshaping it to allow riparian planting and stormwater cleaning. “We need to do what we can to clean the contaminants from stormwater.”

Separately, a proposed new stormwater pumping station in Te Awa could be used to alleviate flood issues in Maraenui.

“Diverting stormwater that is currently being shifted from one end of our city through the urban area to the cross-country drain, could potentially reduce the area needed for stormwater treatment and free up the lagoon farmland. I support the need for better stormwater treatment but don’t support rate payer money developing the currently underfunded regional park.

“We could clean the whole act up pretty quickly. And then the ratepayer has land that it can sell for development and use that land to build the inter-generational investment fund that continues over time to reduce the burden on rates.”

He doesn’t believe there is a quick fix to Napier’s problems, however, and says it will take a couple of terms to get processes and programmes in place to deliver the strategic plan. Nor does he think the city can afford a split vote.

“The most important message to the Napier voters is that if they want change, then they have to vote strategically, and if they want a mayor that is capable of doing what needs to be done … then the only person they should be voting for is me.”

However, it’s not all boring numbers and sensibleness, he assures me with a laugh. “Outwardly I’m conservative, but I like to have fun as well.”