Gore mayor Ben Bell. Photo / Rosalie Willis
Much has been said about Gore's new mayor, 23-year-old Ben Bell.
Hailing from Ōtaki, Bell has squeezed a lot into his 23 years.
Attending Paraparaumu College, commuting in each morning, before a stint at Ōtaki Countdown, Bell then headed overseas to be a ski instructor on a working holiday in Canada despite barely knowing how to ski.
"It was crazy… I knew the very basics.
"I had to learn very quickly as I had two weeks from not really knowing how to ski to teaching both children and adults."
On return Bell worked at Horizons Regional Council, living in Palmerston North, from the end of 2019 in a job that involved looking at environmental data, all the while doing his own projects on the side.
A self-taught coder, Bell started a number of innovative projects including creating water monitoring technology, healthcare smart tech and portable wind turbines.
As the number of projects started to grow, it got to the stage where Bell could either renew his contract at the council or go out on his own.
He decided to go out on his own and started his own business calling it Random42.
"We live in an awesome time where you can pretty much learn anything online or from the people around you.
"We're getting past the stage where you can only learn things at school or university.
"You can build your skill base in other ways."
Finding that most of the clients he was picking up were in Gore, Bell decided to move down south to be nearer to them.
"The family home is still in Ōtaki but because so many of my clients were down there and for some of the projects there's a hardware component to it, I thought it would be better to be down there where I could show them how it works."
It was here that Bell's political aspirations grew as he got talking to clients about the goings on of Gore, one of New Zealand's smaller cities with a population of 13,000 people.
"I was talking with a few people I was working with and we decided we wanted to be councillors so the four of us formed a team called Team Hokonui.
"We thought while four councillors would be great one of us should really go for mayor so I threw my hat into the ring.
"I've been around politics my whole life so I thought I'd give it a try."
Team Hokonui ran an innovative campaign with Bell's fellow candidates Joe Stringer and Robert McKenzie also elected onto the council.
"A lot of people think it was a digital-focused campaign because I'm young, but we actually did a lot of grassroots campaigning too.
"We went around in a caravan and had cups of tea with locals.
"We also did a podcast called Carnival Talks where people could hear our views and more in-depth thoughts on issues.
"We also had a projector which we used to project our billboard onto buildings around the place.
"We did lots of innovative, different things in our campaign to get community engagement."
Their campaign was about getting "Back to Basics".
"We wanted to focus on the things that councils are actually there to do for us like fixing our rural roads, getting recycling and water infrastructure, taking money out of expensive, nice looking projects such as the museum and putting it back to those basic things which are not as exciting."
Winning by just eight votes, Bell beat incumbent mayor Tracy Hicks who has held the position for 18 years.
Hicks is currently calling for a recount, a decision yet to be made, but has already caused problems, postponing the swearing-in of Bell and his fellow councillors, also causing controversy with Bell not being told their swearing-in was being delayed.
Bell said, "It was the slimmest of margins, I'm extremely humbled to be elected mayor of Gore."
Spending two days in Wellington at the Local Government NZ Akona Mayor Induction Hui, Bell said there is a lot to get his head around, especially as the vote count took longer than most other councils.
"I'm thankful to those who made the time and effort to get to know myself and my team throughout our campaign and especially grateful for everyone who voted for me."
As for his former stomping ground, Bell said, he's looking forward to competing against Kāpiti Coast District Council in the New Zealand Bird of the Year competition with his council supporting the Southern New Zealand dotterel and Kāpiti council supporting the Northern New Zealand dotterel.
"It's game on."
"If you’re loyal to them, they will be loyal to you."