King to stand for top job

Hamilton City councillor Andrew King has thrown his hat in the ring for the mayoralty.

The worst kept secret in Hamilton was confirmed on Monday night, with Hamilton City councillor Andrew King announcing his bid for the mayoralty.

Mr King will also stand for election as a councillor in the West ward.

In front of a gathering at King's Finance, Mr King listed his triumphs and losses while serving three years on council.

Among the losses was his failure to get a 2am one-way door policy in the CBD through council.

"The general feeling was we wanted the bars to profiteer more from that late night selling, so we didn't give the police what they asked for.

"I've fought a lot of battles," he said.

He also spoke about fighting increasingly permissive rules on the sinking lid policy for the city's pokie machines.

He said council's method of saving money in recent years was short-sighted.

"Council stopped spending on infrastructure five years ago and on infrastructure planning, which was even worse."

He pointed to a lack of greenfield sections, or undeveloped sections, in Hamilton.

"If you had a manufacturing business and you stopped spending on manufacturing, of course over the next few months when you're selling the old stock out your books would look really good. Once you run out of stock your books would look really good but you would have no stock to sell."

He said as a result the average house and section prices had skyrocketed. He said the next release of 70 sections in Rotokauri were rumoured to sell for about $500,000.

He said increasing infrastructure spending would be a key principle of his campaign and reducing the red tape in the District Plan, which he said was the most restrictive plan the city had ever had.

The Ferrybank development was also touched on by Mr King, who said he had been misunderstood in his opposition, with his only umbrage being the use of reserve classified land to build a planned five-storey apartment block.

"It will stop the view from Victoria St to the river," Mr King said.

He said no individual should profiteer from reserve land.

Mr King said his wins included campaigning for the Victoria on the River site to be turned into a park and having the corporate box at the FMG Stadium Waikato expenses being included as a cost in the city's books.

He closed his speech by rejecting the prospect of water meters, claiming the $5 million annual saving of creating a council-controlled organisation to manage water would be passed onto the ratepayers if water meters were introduced, in the form of maintenance and repair.