KEY POINTS:
Mayor George Wood is well ahead of his four rivals in his bid for his fourth term as Mayor of North Shore City, a Herald-DigiPoll survey shows.
Nearly two-thirds , or 63.4 per cent, of decided voters chose Mr Wood as their preferred mayor, ahead of former councillor Andrew Williams, who gained 15 per cent of support, and sitting councillor Callum Blair, on 13 per cent.
Mr Wood has strong support in the Harbour Ward.
But he has less support in the Northern Ward, where the effects of the possible use of Whenuapai Air Base by airliners is a big election issue.
Mr Blair, who is a Northern Ward councillor and campaigns under the banner "No Commercial Airport", scored highest in his home ward.
Mr Williams' support was evenly spread over the Northern, Central and Harbour Wards.
Mr Wood, a former police manager, has built up a rock-solid majority in successive elections and last time pulled 25,241 votes out of 47,000 cast.
But this time his opponents have been getting a warmer reception at public meetings with their hard-hitting criticism of issues such as hefty rates rises and the air base flight paths.
The level of support showed in the poll surprised Mr Wood when he was told last night.
"It's more than I was thinking of," he said. "I've put three terms of work into it but I've also had a dream council to work with."
He said the council had made hard decisions in the last three years on putting up rates to get on with improving water infrastructure and transport.
Mr Williams said he was expecting a big swing in public opinion towards his candidacy in the next 10 days as more people got to read his pamphlets and became aware of issues that the council had hidden.
Mr Blair could not be contacted.
Nearly a third of those polled in North Shore had either not decided who they would choose or said they would not vote for any of the six candidates.
Turnout at the last election was among the lowest in the country, with just 35.2 per cent of 149,000 registered voters having their say.
Other results from the poll showed the most important election issue for voters was transport (23.9 per cent).
Recent issues include the siting of any tunnel under the Waitemata Harbour, a $3 million budget blowout on the Onewa Rd widening project bringing its cost to $11.3 million, and the lack of space at park and ride stations along the Northern Motorway.
The next important was council spending (22.8 per cent) and property rates (22 per cent).
Mr Williams and Mr Blair have been highlighting the fact that North Shore has the highest rate increase of any city in the region and that the council's 10-year plan shows annual increases in excess of 8 per cent.
Asked about the performance of the current council, only 13.3 per cent of those surveyed rated it excellent or very good, 55.6 per cent said it was good and 31 per cent marked it poor or very poor.
More than half (58.5 per cent), say the eight councils in the region should be replaced by one council for Greater Auckland.
Only 30 per cent of respondents were in favour of the council cushioning their rates impact by taking on more debt in order to spread payments for big projects over many years.
Most approved suggestions that the Government put a small amount of GST into a fund to pay for water infrastructure and that the Government start paying rates on Crown properties such as schools and hospitals.
