‘A genuine choice’: The councillor vying for the mayoral chains

Saturday, 6 September 2025

As part of the election 2025 coverage, Katie Townshend spoke to Nelson’s two leading candidates for the mayoralty.

In the race to be Nelson’s mayor, current councillor Aaron Stallard is firmly positioning himself as a “genuine choice” to incumbent Nick Smith.

“I bring a different direction to the current mayor,” he says in an interview with the Nelson Mail.

The list of differences is notable: Stallard doesn’t back the Hope Bypass, he believes talk about amalgamation is “a distraction”, he backs a new storage facility for the Nelson Provincial Museum, and he doesn’t support a 5% rates cap pledge.

But, when asked what way he offers a choice, the first thing he points to is transparency and the organisation of the council.

In particular, he want to bring back a committee structure, which Smith scrapped this term and replaced with taskforces.

Stallard believed that change resulted in problems, including a lack of oversight and “quite an unusual concentration of power”.

The loss of $5 million in funding for the east-west cycleway was one example, he said.

“It’s our own fault for not having governance oversight.”

He planned to delegate more, to make use of the skills around the table, saying the abolishment of committees was a “missed opportunity”.

“Councillors who are very able have not been given the responsibilities that they should be, and they haven’t gained the experience.”

Aside from transparency and structure, he has four key campaign priorities to make people a “world-leading sustainable city we are all proud to call home”: safe and affordable transport choices; a healthy environment; a region resilient to hazards; and a vibrant city centre.

When it comes transport, he’s clear the walking and cycle path on Rocks Rd needs to be brought back to the fore.

“It’s not working for anyone to have cyclists and logging trucks on the same road.”

He did not believe the Hope Bypass was a good investment, as it would just shift the problems to another part of the network.

He doesn’t support the under 5% rates pledge, arguing rates increases should be decided “year by year, long-term plan by long-term plan in the context of the economic situation, in the context of community expectations around services”.

It was one thing to say you wanted lower rates, and another to say what had to be cut to achieve that, he said.

“Good governance is to make informed decisions at the appropriate time, with all the information in front of you and in consultation with the community rather than out of the blue during a campaign, which can look more like a stunt than good governance.”

He thinks that is part of what has driven the debate around the new museum facility.

“It does represent kind of an example of when the rubber hits the road in terms of people who say, we want to lower rates … it's quite an important test case for that approach of we're going to lower rates no matter what.”

Rather than a blanket pledge, he said working to reclaim GST on rates from central government, more user -pays models for transport, and ratepayer assistance schemes were better levers to pull to help with rates affordability.

As a current councillor, the work he’s proudest of from the past thee years is the development of the Climate Change Strategy, which provides “a blueprint for moving forward”, he said.

A big issue in the next three years would be how the council brings the community along with it when making difficult decisions, he said.

“As we encounter problems like intensification, plan changes, how we deal with climate, inundation and so on, we need to find a way that the community feels their voice is being heard and that there's good buy-in - and at times it seems our current practices don't achieve that.”

And, finally - what’s something about him that would surprise people?

Stallard rattled off a list that ranged from the light-hearted - he once broke 150 glasses at once in a 5-star hotel in London - to the serious, surviving emergency open-heart surgery in 2010.

“That’s probably all the safer ones.”