His executive assistant, Vanessa Smith-Glintenkamp, resigned in December, claiming in her resignation letter that it was because of McGrath\u2019s \u201cdisregard for Treaty principles\u201d.<\/p>\n
He stood down his first deputy mayor, Sally Crown, after she refused to resign and instead requested the mayor undergo leadership training for what she called \u201cad-hoc\u201d, \u201creckless\u201d and \u201cchaotic\u201d decision-making.<\/p>\n
He then appointed Roger Brownlie as his second deputy, but councillors, unhappy at the process, asked for a rethink.<\/p>\n
Brownlie was removed from the role to allow councillors to vote on a third deputy mayor in less than a month.<\/p>\n
Long-term councillor Graeme Taylor, the only nominee, was appointed to the role at an extraordinary meeting on March 17.<\/p>\n
As McGrath sits in Cape View House, the temporary office home of many Napier City Council (NCC) staff, we ask him: Does he feel like he can be the mayor he wanted to be with such a fractured council?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not terribly fractured,\u201d he insists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting better. I think it was just a hangover from the last council and the shock change, because it was a shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it had been a while since he\u2019d even thought about it because \u201cwe\u2019re rocking and rolling how we should be\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said everyone was voted in for different reasons, and councillors all had their own agenda to push.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife would be easy if I had 11 councillors who all followed the party line,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he had no problem with councillors voting against him because that was what democracy was all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been that person in the past, the only one voting against projects I didn\u2019t support.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as it\u2019s not for spite, and I don\u2019t think we\u2019re seeing that around our table.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrath said being a mayor was a bit like living in a very unique world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of hard stuff that you have to do, but I don\u2019t mind that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re not prepared to do it, you shouldn\u2019t be sitting in the seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s some boring stuff, but there are also cool things, like getting invited to community events, whether that\u2019s Relay for Life, Hawke\u2019s Bay volunteering, or the opening of a business, because it shows progress or the community using what\u2019s on hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Napier Mayor Richard McGrath needs a break, he crosses Marine Parade to the basketball court to shoot some hoops. Photo \/ Linda Hall<\/p>\n
He said the hardest part of his job was being locked in the office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does my head in, and we\u2019re going to have to find some solutions to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
His worst fear was not spending enough time in the community talking with the people about \u201ctheir city, not my city, their city\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said in hindsight, he might have approached some things differently when he became mayor, but it would not have changed any decisions guided by his values or by what he believed the community wanted when it elected him.<\/p>\n
The thing he was most proud of so far was being able to follow through on some of the campaign promises, such as reassessing the Waka Hub and Ahuriri Regional Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went out before election time and asked what was important to people, and it was loud and clear they wanted council to get back to basics and stop doing things that didn\u2019t need to be done in our current situation, especially with the cost of living and now with the fuel crisis on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrath has plenty to say on amalgamation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go back to the referendum in 2015, I was absolutely against it, and I still am.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says it\u2019s not the solution to the problems and that it hasn\u2019t worked for Auckland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates a whole lot of transition costs and upheaval. For some reason, the Government doesn\u2019t seem to like working with councils. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey say it\u2019s too hard with 68 of them. But I\u2019d argue 90% of our work doesn\u2019t involve them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he felt as if they were being backed into a corner, and while the Government says it\u2019s voluntary, \u201cit really isn\u2019t\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only voluntary side is \u2018you can jump off the cliff, or we\u2019ll push you\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In McGrath\u2019s opinion, there are other options for Hawke\u2019s Bay\u2019s amalgamation, rather than a single unitary council that includes Napier, Hastings, Central Hawke\u2019s Bay and Wairoa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m passionate about this city, and I\u2019m not here to give it away. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a few options. There\u2019s the unitary option, which would basically be like a regional council. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s the model that failed us and is sort of the catalyst for the change. Why would you have the same model that left Wairoa out during the cyclone?\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrath\u2019s idea is for Napier and Wairoa to merge in the north and Hastings and Central Hawke\u2019s Bay in the south, using the river as the boundary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already have shared services, and those would remain. But it would be essential to ensure Wairoa and Central Hawke\u2019s Bay were not stripped of frontline staff or equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen things turn to custard, you don\u2019t want to discover there are no diggers on the ground and no one there to lead the response.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t got over the hospital yet,\u201d he said of the closure of Napier Hospital in 1998.<\/p>\n
He said the council was still talking with the community and no decisions had been made yet.<\/p>\n
He said the Government reforms were a struggle for all councils.<\/p>\n
Asked if he would stand to be a potential regional mayor in 2028, McGrath said he hadn\u2019t thought that far down the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just trying to do what\u2019s right for Napier now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said being the Mayor of Napier was everything he thought it would be, but hoped it wouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s potentially the greatest job in the world. I absolutely love Napier, and I\u2019ve put a lot of time and effort into it, whether it be in the early days of volunteering and helping out where I can.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fantastic city, but when you\u2019ve got people, personalities and politics, it\u2019s never easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there would always be tension between councils and residents, and that\u2019s why there was a consultation process, so everyone could have their say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people struggling, so we have to balance that and not stop dead as a town. We don\u2019t want to become a ghost town.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the community had \u201cscreamed out for change\u201d by electing him.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s now doing everything he can to deliver it.<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His executive assistant, Vanessa Smith-Glintenkamp, resigned in December, claiming in her resignation letter that it was because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2840,95,806,26568,8834,66037,8608,31787,2949,6276,39724,7799,293,92275,10934,56454,3607,111,43,139,69,6270,90,3550,15160,1314,8730,41637,27916,544,4497,19346,1316,248202,102],"class_list":["post-497627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-across","tag-and","tag-as","tag-basketball","tag-big","tag-chat","tag-comes","tag-doing","tag-finding","tag-gets","tag-grabs","tag-heads","tag-his","tag-hoops","tag-mayor","tag-mcgrath","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-office","tag-on","tag-rhythm","tag-richard","tag-road","tag-rocky","tag-shoot","tag-sick","tag-some","tag-start","tag-stuff","tag-when","tag-whoever","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}