Keith Price defends council as election heralds new era

Keith Price is seeking a fifth term on the Napier City Council. Photo / Doug Laing

For many candidates, Local Elections D-day on October 12 can't come soon enough — the day voting ends and decides the outcome.

But for Napier City Council veteran detective Keith Price his fourth term at the table could have done with an extra few months. That's so the public could see a council that is set to lose almost half its members has been making progress on several if not all of the burning issues.

"Some people out there seem to think we've been sitting around doing nothing," says Price, who as chairman of the Strategy and Infrastructure Committee has been at the centre of development issues involving the council.

"Actually, quite a lot is happening, and will happen in the term of the new council."

Some resolutions are close; among them is the future of the Napier Public Library, which he "personally" hopes will re-establish on the site abandoned suddenly in 2017 after falling-short in earthquake risk assessment.

It's temporary home at the MTG is too small, he says, and in any event a museum is not the place for the library.

Three options are expected to be put to the public early in the new council's term. Among a team of the mayor and 12 councillors, there will be at least five new faces, after retirements including Mayor Bill Dalton, deputy and acting mayor Faye White and councillor Tony Jeffery.

One of four new-council aspirants who voted in favour of a new aquatic centre site off Prebensen Dr, Price says the new council will now determine the pool future.

The incoming council will also have to get on top of the other water issues, hopefully a plan to dechlorinate Napier's drinking supply, and to improve wastewater disposal and restore Ahuriri Estuary and Pandora Pond to being "a place where anybody can swim", he says.

He also now wants the new council to "revisit" freedom camping, specifically sites, which he says should not impinge on the rights of ratepayers.

Businessman, former detective and championship-winning senior rugby coach now chairing the Hawks NBL basketball franchise as well as Basketball Hawke's Bay, Price is one of five contesting two Ahuriri seats in Napier's return to full-ward representation.

He first came to the council winning a four-candidate battle for a single Onekawa-Tamatea seat when the At-Large and Wards system was introduced in 2007. He was re-elected unopposed in 2010, and in 2013 and 2016 succeeded in the city-wide At-Large votes.