Kibble did not get voted in to become a councillor, but served as a youth councillor from 2016 to 2018 and was co-chair of the Youth Council in 2020.
The council has since disestablished the Youth Council.
However, Kibble believes it is “a really useful tool to connect the council to the next generation of leaders”.
Young people needed to have a say in the issues that mattered to them, she said.
This included the appeal of the city centre, its nightlife, shops closing down and reduced employment opportunities, housing shortages, and planning for climate resiliency.
Kibble, who runs a marketing company, said the council needed to engage youth in the years leading up to elections.
“It needs to be something that’s going to be entertaining or funny or relatable.
“We consume so much content now when it comes to social media ... [so] it needs to cut through that.”
Anita Reedy-Holthausen, council director of engagement and Māori partnerships, said the council was committed to engaging rangatahi in local democracy, not just during election years.
During local elections, the engagement ramped up, she said.
The council connected with schools, ran initiatives like youth-focused art competitions, and pushed strong messaging through social media ... “using relatable talent and a tone that speaks to our younger audience”.
Unfortunately, over time, and particularly following Covid, youth participation in the council steadily declined, and there were no immediate plans to restart the Youth Council while the region focused on recovery, Reedy-Holthausen said.
“While the goal was to provide a platform for rangatahi to contribute to local decision-making, there were several barriers to sustaining the [Youth Council] initiative.”
This included difficulty recruiting members, significant time commitments and the reality that council-related topics weren’t always a top priority for young people, she said.
Additionally, she said the Youth Council required considerable support from staff, elected members and budget allocation.
When it came to the under-representation of young people around the council table, Reedy-Holthausen said they let candidates know about the governance responsibilities and time expectations.
“Particularly for younger members, the time commitment involved in reading agendas, attending meetings and engaging with the community can be hard to manage alongside early career and family obligations.”
Gisborne district councillors are paid $49,822 a year, with the potential to earn more from additional responsibilities.
Issac Hughes was 27 when he became the youngest Gisborne district councillor in history.
He campaigned during a byelection in 2020, and as it was Covid, he knew he would not be able to travel, so he could give two years, he said.
If it had been a three-year term, it would have been a more difficult decision, because he would have been taking three years out of his professional career, he said.
It has been estimated that the role of a councillor takes 22.5 hours a week on average, but Hughes said it was closer to full-time work to do it effectively.
“I was in a privileged position in the sense that in my career [as a chartered accountant alongside other contract work], I could do some work on the side ... but you do take a bit of a kind of financial hit.”
During his time as a councillor, he tried to set up the Youth Council again, because he had been a youth councillor in his early 20s and felt that this experience helped prepare him for his role at the council table.
He advised any candidates campaigning to become a councillor to talk to current councillors to understand what the role entailed.
