TOP STORY: Ex-councillor in HB court twice

Former Hastings district councillor and well-known Havelock North businessman Terry Coxon appeared in court twice yesterday.
Terence Robert Coxon, 65, appeared first in the Hastings District Court yesterday morning for a defended hearing on one charge of driving with an excess breath-alcohol level and a second of breaching his limited licence.
However, the former councillor changed his plea, admitting he had been well over the limit when he was breath-tested by police in Havelock North on November 4.
Judge Geoff Rea convicted him on the two charges and remanded him on bail to appear in the Wanganui District Court on April 18 - one of his conditions of bail was that he not drive.
But not long after leaving the courthouse, he was picked up by Hastings police doing just that - and found himself in the police cells, waiting to appear again before the judge for breaching his bail.
Judge Rea duly warned him for his first breach of bail and released him again on bail.
Coxon has been a public figure in Hawke's Bay since the early 1980s, when he formed real-estate company Cox Coxon Ltd, which traded as The Professionals before becoming Harcourts in 1990. Coxon went on to form Harvey Coxon Ltd.
But it was his election to the Hastings City Council in 1986 and then on the newly formed district council in 1989 that cemented his status in the community - he gave up office in 1995.
He has been the Hawke's Bay district president for the Real Estate Institute, chairman of the New Zealand Institute of Valuers Hawke's Bay Branch and is a Justice of the Peace. Mr Coxon refused to comment to Hawke's Bay Today.
Eastern Police District road-policing manager Inspector John Fairley said that in his 20 years of policing it was rarely the case that someone got back behind the wheel on the same day they were told not to drive.
He believed people had a responsibility not to drive when their licence was revoked.