‘Experience is my strength’: King vies for third and final term

Friday, 19 September 2025

When it comes to promises made on the campaign trail, incumbent Tasman mayor Tim King says he’s a realist.

He doesn’t believe that rate increases are going back to the days of 1%, 1.5% or 2% rises any time soon, particularly with investment needed in water, wastewater, stormwater, roading and rubbish collection and disposal.

While this year’s increase was 8.9%, the average over the past decade has been 3.9%, he said.

And when the vast majority of the council’s debt came from those core services, moving forward, it was going to be the “big players”: Taumata Arowai Water Services Authority and the Commerce Commission, who’d be deciding what the council invested in over what time frame and how much it charged to ensure it was sustainable, King said.

The single biggest project the council was going to carry in the next 10 years was the Motueka Wastewater Treatment upgrade, with a cost of $100 million.

King said he didn’t anticipate that Local Water Done Well was going to break the council.

“It is, however, going to require a steady increase in the cost of particularly those services, and they are the most expensive services that we provide.”

When it comes to debt, and dam debt in particular, King said he was not uncomfortable with the amount the council contributed, in the context of the next 50 years.

The challenges with such projects was that you couldn’t build them incrementally in bits and pieces.

“At some point,” he said, “someone has to make a decision to invest for the longer term.”

Standing in front of a crowd at the Wakefield Village Hall earlier this month, King said key issues would be three waters, rivers, waste management and roads.

He’s also positive about growth in Tasman, a “phenomenally popular place to live”.

However that arrives, whether via greenfields or infill, “ultimately ratepayers will have to bear the cost of that investment”. Where he differs from other candidates is that he doesn’t believe that it is a lot cheaper to retrofit or consolidate on existing infrastructure.

“If you think about how you would provide things like more natural stormwater disposal systems, really good walking cycling access, open space, green space and reserves in existing urban areas, as they are intensified, that is a very expensive process to try and do, and you don't get the economies of scale.

“Because inevitably, that sort of redevelopment happens in small locations, incrementally over quite a long time.”

But the other side of that is making sure that greenfield developments cater for a wide range of housing options, “not just all 600m² sections with a single house”.

As to why he believes he’s the best man for the job, King said experience is his strength. King is seeking his third, and final term as mayor, and has served on the council for 27 years - including 18 years as deputy mayor.

With the number of experienced councillors not restanding, and uncertainty ahead, the role required a “solid understanding” of rules, regulations, and legislation that councils are required and obliged to implement.

“That is the only way that you can legitimately question council staff and the advice that you receive.”

As to the region’s transport woes, the Hope Bypass was a “massively important” project for the area, and King understood the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi had made a decision on its next steps with the project.

Whoever lands the top job is going to have to deal with the long term economic fallout of Tasman’s two extreme rain events.

King said the events had shown how challenging the region was in terms of climate adaptation, dealing with an ever-changing environment and the impact of natural disasters.

In terms of mitigation, he said it was pleasing to see the region’s emissions tracking down according to the latest government data, and the uptake on public transport had been “particularly promising”.

Outside work hours, King’s happy place couldn’t be further from the council chambers.

For over a decade, he’s been the coach of Nelson’s Junior Representative under 52kg rugby team.

Asked why he does it, and he recounts how when he went out to coach while the region was reeling from the aftermath of the floods, and the kids thanked him for doing so.

“You hear a lot of crap about kids and ‘kids these days’,” King said.

“[But] they’re a phenomenal bunch of young people … It helps keep you optimistic about the future.”