With progress votes publicly released this afternoon, Independent candidates Sharon Stewart and Maurice Williamson are leading the race to represent the Howick ward on Auckland Council’s governing body.
Stewart, an incumbent Howick ward councillor, leads the field with 13,764 votes while Williamson, the previous MP for Pakuranga, has 12,635.
The second incumbent Howick ward councillor, Paul Young, is in third place with 9,978 votes, slightly in front of his running mate Bo Burns on 9,666.
Damian Light is in fifth place with 8,148 votes, with Morgan Xiao sixth on 3,303.
This year’s race for the two council seats in the Howick ward is a return to politics for Williamson, who ran on the message of reining in council spending.
He served as MP for Pakuranga from 1987-2017 and held roles in a previous National Government including Minister of Customs, Building and Construction, Statistics, and Small Business.
After leaving Parliament Williamson took up the post as New Zealand’s consul-general in Los Angeles.
When he announced he was standing for a council seat earlier this year he said it was never his intention to stand for local government.
“Public pressure has made me rethink that position.
“I am approached on an almost daily basis by ratepayers who are seriously concerned about the performance of the Auckland Council.
“Rates just keep on going up, as does debt, yet we seem to be getting less from the council by way of core services.”
Williamson said the Super-City council had “never delivered for the ratepayer” since being formed in 2010.
“We were told at the time that the amalgamation would see huge efficiency gains, a rationalisation of operational units, and significant cost savings.
“We were promised the new regime would see a reduction in costs and total staff employed.
“But in reality, the very opposite has happened.
“Rates have risen by over 150 per cent in real terms after correcting for inflation.
“Liabilities have more than tripled and debt servicing is now costing over a million dollars a day, and that’s while interest rates have been at all-time lows.
“And far from rationalising the number of staff, Auckland Council has experienced a massive increase in overall staff numbers, with at least one in every four of those employees paid over $100,000 a year.
“There has to be a day of reckoning.
“No organisation can just keep spending money that it hasn’t got and racking up debt.
“If the ratepayers of the Howick ward are prepared to give me their vote, I will be fixated on reducing costs, staff, debt, liabilities and most importantly, rates.”
