Neil Kirton was top on 10,599 and last term\u2019s chair Hinewai Ormsby was third on 8436.<\/p>\n
Ormsby said it would be up to councillors at the first meeting on October 29 to decide who the chairperson would be.<\/p>\n
She congratulated all those re-elected and welcomed the four new councillors joining the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to the election of chair and deputy for the region,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Parsons, who in recent years has been national spokeswoman for the Sensible Sentencing Trust, has also been outspoken in her criticism of the way HBRC handled Cyclone Gabrielle.<\/p>\n
She says she will be walking into the council on her first day with her shoulders back and her head high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got nothing to worry about,\u201d Parsons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are the ones who should be hanging their heads,\u201d she said of the re-elected councillors.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, they\u2019ve got to make it up to me, not the other way around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parsons said she was in the throes of the Cyclone Gabrielle inquest, and the more she learned, the more she realised she was in the right place as a councillor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings need to change and the first thing is making sure there are systems in place so we are safe in the next disaster. That\u2019s a major.\u201d<\/p>\n
In February 2024, HBRC councillors voted 8-3 to change the way it calculated its rates from land value to capital value, despite almost 90% of submitters opposing the change.<\/p>\n
Parsons says she wants to find a way to change it back.<\/p>\n
Capital value considers the value of both the land and the improvements on a property, such as buildings, rather than the value of the land only.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the most ridiculous decision I\u2019ve ever heard from a regional council. That\u2019s something we could fix for the benefit of so many people who are struggling right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe council has had enough time to see the pain this extra burden is causing ratepayers, so I\u2019m hoping they do the right thing and back me on this.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the third thing she wanted to focus on was the people harshly affected by different land zoning categories, introduced after Cyclone Gabrielle, in a bid to prevent future flood catastrophes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just been ridiculous. People can\u2019t get insurance because of the blunders the council made with that system and it needs to be fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Erosion, especially at Westshore, is also high on her list.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something I want to get stuck into,\u201d Parsons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis could be the shortest career as a local councillor that you\u2019ll ever see, but I\u2019m literally not going to sit around, because I believe that\u2019s what\u2019s happened in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll always be respectful, but if there\u2019s something that p****s me off and is wrong, I\u2019ll call it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joining Parsons at the table for the first time will be Tony Kuklinski, Conrad Waitoa and Michelle McIlroy.<\/p>\n
HOW A REGIONAL COUNCIL CHAIR IS ELECTED<\/p>\n
A prospective chair needs to be nominated by a current councillor.<\/p>\n
They need a majority of six or more councillors voting in their favour.<\/p>\n
There can be several rounds of voting.<\/p>\n
The same process is followed for the deputy chair.<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neil Kirton was top on 10,599 and last term\u2019s chair Hinewai Ormsby was third on 8436. Ormsby said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8831,5195,37432,38290,15559,1976,61810,31989,61812,117,111,16652,43,139,5006,69,61811,61813,5914,205,50216,15412,9640,684,61,14638],"class_list":["post-80179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-an","tag-be","tag-chair","tag-councillor","tag-elected","tag-hawkes","tag-hbrc","tag-im","tag-louise","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newly","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-ornament","tag-parsons","tag-regional","tag-role","tag-sights","tag-spot","tag-table","tag-there","tag-to","tag-wants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80179","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=80179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}