{"id":84380,"date":"2025-10-17T13:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84380\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T13:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:29:09","slug":"local-elections-2025-james-denyer-confirmed-as-western-bay-of-plenty-mayor-as-final-results-declared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/84380\/","title":{"rendered":"Local elections 2025: James Denyer confirmed as Western Bay of Plenty Mayor as final results declared"},"content":{"rendered":"

Voter return was 38.06%, being 15,301 votes, including special votes, which have now been validated and counted.<\/p>\n

Return from the 2022 election was 37.6%.<\/p>\n

Darlene Dinsdale will be the district\u2019s first Ma\u014dri ward councillor.<\/p>\n

Final results show 8462 votes to remove the M\u0101ori ward after the 2025-2028 triennium versus 5892 votes to keep the M\u0101ori ward.<\/p>\n

Allan Sole and Rodney Joyce have been re-elected as Katikati-Waih\u012b Beach Ward councillors.<\/p>\n

Newcomer Graeme Elvin will join current councillors Margaret Murray-Benge and Tracey Coxhead in the Kaimai ward.<\/p>\n

\"MargaretMargaret Murray-Benge was runner-up for mayor and re-elected to the Kaimai Ward.<\/p>\n

In the Maketu-Te Puke ward, Grant Dally and Laura Rae have been re-elected.<\/p>\n

First-time councillor Shane Beech will take the third Maketu-Te Puke seat; he had to pull out of the 2022 election at the last minute for health reasons.<\/p>\n

The new council will be sworn in on November 5.<\/p>\n

Denyer has not said who he plans to make deputy mayor, telling Local Democracy Reporting<\/a> on Sunday that he was thinking about it and planned to sit down with each councillor in the coming days.<\/p>\n

It will also be the first term under new governance arrangements, with a mayor and nine councillors. Previously, there were 11 councillors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voter return was 38.06%, being 15,301 votes, including special votes, which have now been validated and counted. Return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[836,806,1561,1558,2223,12817,56822,5903,7797,5904,305,14054,440,10934,111,43,139,69,1118,1562,19389,5909,3457],"class_list":["post-84380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-836","tag-as","tag-bay","tag-been","tag-confirmed","tag-declared","tag-denyer","tag-election","tag-elections","tag-final","tag-have","tag-james","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-plenty","tag-plentys","tag-results","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84380","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=84380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}