Incumbent Napier City councillor Robin Gwynn is having a go at the council over its "lazy" attempt to make the new ward system work. This year the Local Government Commission ruled Napier had to implement a partial ward system, after previously having all 12 elected councillors drawn from across the city. Thenew arrangement sees Napier divided into four wards, Ahuriri, Nelson Park, Taradale and Onekawa-Tamatea. Ahuriri will have one elected councillor, as will Onekawa-Tamatea, while Nelson Park and Taradale will have two councillors each. Six further councillors will be elected as city-wide representatives. Cr Gwynn was the only sitting councillor backing the change, but with elections looming in October he said the Napier City Council was not doing enough to promote the wards. The council "simply seems to be hoping wards will go away", he said and added it had either been obstructive or plain lazy. Its failure to provide ward-candidate meetings has particularly concerned him. "With the new system and no existent organisation in place to arrange meetings within the wards, that is basic." But Napier Mayor Barbara Arnott said Cr Gwynn "may be forgetting we had wards in 1995". "Our people are quite intelligent, they know the system. People are used to wards here, it's not as though this is a whole new issue." She said it was not the council's job to arrange candidate meetings - it was up to the community and the community was doing so: "I have already been invited to three." Mrs Arnott said the latest edition of Proudly Napier had pages dedicated to explaining the system and she was happy with the level of understanding "people on the street" had. Nominations for this year's election close at 12pm on August 24. Voters have until 4pm on the same day to get their names on the electoral roll, or face missing their chance to vote. Cr Gwynn is standing for re-election in an at-large seat.
