Olympian-turned-mayor of Tauranga Mahé Drysdale reflects on first few months on the job

Mayor Mahé Drysdale at a September Tauranga City Council meeting. Photo / David Hall

By Libby Kirkby-McLeod of RNZ

Reflecting on 2024, Olympian-turned-mayor Mahé Drysdale says he had no regrets about taking on what is proving to be a huge job.

Drysdale was elected as mayor of Tauranga city in July, as part of the first council to take back democratic control of the city which had been run by commissioners for more than three years.

The spectre of the commissioners, and their decisions, dominated much of the first few months for the council.

“We’ve probably been more reactive rather than the proactive I’d like to be, but that’s probably just dealing with a lot of the things thrown at us very early on,” he said.

Here’s an example: the first week in the job, the new mayor and council had to decide if they wanted to fund infrastructure through the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) levy as proposed by the commissioners.

“We had to fund $151 million, [with] an assumption we would fund it one way and we funded it a different way,” he said.

The council decided against the IFF levy and to instead apply to the Local Government Financing Agency (LGFA).

“That has had big impacts going forward as to what we can spend etc, but that was the right thing to do for our ratepayers, it is a much better deal,” Drysdale said.

Mahé Drysdale is an Olympic gold medal winning rower and Mayor of Tauranga. Photo / Photosport

Possibly the most contentious decision the council inherited was the sale of the marine precinct, which had been labelled a “disaster” by many, but the new council was powerless to stop, he said.

“The deal is a deal,” he said, though later he made it clear that if that same deal was put in front of the current council, they would not have sold the land.

If the commissioners are the ghost of Christmas past, the Government is the ghost of Christmas future for Drysdale.

“What we’ve also discovered in that [first] three months is central government decisions have a huge impact on both our balance sheets and our assumptions of revenue.”

Drysdale said the city pretty much had no money to do anything with.

“We are right at our debt headroom. Our rates increases are very high over the next 10 years, so we have to try to manage within an envelope because we understand our ratepayers don’t have endless amounts of money.”

Part of that problem, Drysdale said, was the rating system itself.

Mahé Drysdale shortly after winning the mayoralty. Photo / Alisha Evans

“The system is a wee bit broken,” he said.

One thing that has become clear to Drysdale is that the council needs to do a better job of taking people with them in their decisions.

“That is definitely one of the priorities of this council, is that we engage and understand the views out in the community,” he said.

Generally, he finds people supportive of the council, though he has spoken out about the way some council staff have been treated.

“If you are going to attack people personally - I don’t accept that. If you want to have a discussion around these things, and debate them, absolutely open to that, and very very happy to be transparent and give the information we can,” he said.

During the election campaign, attention was drawn to the fact that Drysdale wasn’t actually a Tauranga resident. In fact, he lives 100km away from the city.

“We haven’t found a house yet - the housing crisis is real,” he said when asked if he had moved closer yet.

However, he said the plan was still to be based in the city before the 2025 school year.