Alley, Quinn to contest mayoralty
The race is on with two candidates putting up their hand for the mayoral chains in Central Otago.
It will the first election either contestant has faced because sitting mayor Tamah Alley was appointed by her fellow councillors following the resignation of her mentor Tim Cadogan.
Mr Cadogan left office at Labour Weekend last year, timing his resignation to avoid a by-election as it was within a year of the next round of local body elections.
Mrs Alley, a former police officer and two-term councillor, was appointed by the district councillors at a meeting on October 30.
Before being appointed as interim mayor, Mrs Alley was the only Local Government New Zealand zone chair who was not a mayor or deputy mayor.
Challenging Mrs Alley is Roxburgh resident Mark Quinn. He is the founder of Challenging Councils — a movement set up to reclaim control over local government decisions and ensure councils are operating in a fair and transparent manner. He could not be contacted yesterday.
Mr Quinn's LinkedIn profile says he worked as a self-employed troubleshooting business consultant, as a quotes administrator for Mitre 10 in Rangiora, and as a shellfish manager for Talleys in Motueka before being self-employed for the past 10 years.
Currently, Mr Quinn has an almond orchard in Roxburgh. He has been travelling the country holding meetings for Challenging Councils.
Challenging Councils' website says it is time for action and to hold councils to account for rising rates and council debt. It says Challenging Councils is not political, incorporated, funded or conspiracy theorists.
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Otago Daily Times
11 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Letters to the Editor: elections, paywave and FBI
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A powerful and respectful US is the only thing that will save this world from future conflagrations. Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@
The Spinoff
a day ago
- The Spinoff
The politics of trust: What the wellbeing era got right (and wrong)
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I'm not saying we should give up on trying to build trust. But we do need a more realistic and dynamic understanding of what trust actually is – politically, psychologically and socially. It's not static. It's not neutral. It's not equally held by all. We also need to ask: what groups trust institutions? When does that trust shift, and why? What role does media – and media literacy – play in those shifts? Can institutions be designed to be trusted across partisan lines? I don't have all the answers. But I do know we need to stop treating trust like a KPI and start treating it like the complex, shifting thing that it is. Because otherwise, we're just chasing shadows – and wondering why we always feel like we're either winning or losing, up or down, in or out.
Otago Daily Times
4 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Door closing on chance to post vote
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