Andrew Bydder eyes Waipā mayoralty after sweary submission

Monday, 18 November 2024

The city councillor censured after a foul-mouthed submission to Waipā District Council, including a jibe at mayor Susan O’Regan, is now seriously considering running for her job.

Councillor Andrew Bydder - a Waipā-based architectural designer - said on Friday he’d been asked by “dozens” of fellow locals to run for mayor at next year’s council elections.

They included “businesspeople and community members”, he said, and he’s now weighing up options.

Bydder told the Waikato Times the people asking him to run felt that “apart from Roger Gordon, who’s a [Waipā] councillor, I’m the only other person standing up against the council”, he said.

Asked what difference they thought he’d make, he said: “There is a need for common sense and practical business experience to manage the costs and debt that keep blowing out.

“And councils are essentially engineering and property development companies.

“Three quarters of their expenditure are in roads, water services, and property management and development. So you need people with skills in this area.”

He said supporters felt he’d be a better mayor to have oversight of these types of council activities because of his related business experiences, and because they felt he’d take a more fiscally conservative approach.

Bydder - who campaigned on fixing “over spending” and “out of control debt” when seeking a Hamilton seat - was part of a four-strong Team Integrity group that ran at the 2022 elections. He was the team’s only successful candidate.

In Waipā, he wanted to gather a group of like-minded councillor candidates around him if he were to stand.

“I need commitment from other people to put their names forward as councillors because it simply comes down to a numbers game. We need a majority to make the necessary change.”

A majority would enable such a group to govern Waipā in a fiscally responsible and sensible way, he said.

His focus had been on Hamilton’s election next year, “but there’s enough good candidates coming through [there] that I could skip to Waipā”.

However, he was keeping open the possibility of running for either council.

He said a key message to voters was “if you think the councils are doing a good job don’t vote for me”.

“I would much rather be doing my architecture projects where I earn far more. But I need to try and fix things if people agree.”

His sales pitch to Waipā voters would be: “Common sense, an end to the speed bumps and control all the rates and debt”.

Bydder has already been active recently in highlighting issues at Waipā.

In emails to the Waikato Times over the past several weeks, he has noted how Waipā had reconfirmed a total reset for the transport project he submitted on and how a long term plan workshop revealed much higher costs for two wastewater projects.

Earlier this month, the city council backed off pursuing Bydder after he thumbed his nose at their request that he say sorry over the wording of his Waipā submission which, besides criticising O’Regan and staff, used words offensive to those with disabilities.

He was asked to apologise to O’Regan, Cerebral Palsy New Zealand and IHC, and attend training after a city code of conduct case which cost more than $20,000.

But Bydder refused to add anything to what he said in September: “For the record I am genuinely sorry for any hurt caused to the public”.

In a statement this month, council chief executive Lance Vervoort said he shared the disappointment expressed by Bydder's council colleagues that the apologies requested of him have not been made by the deadline set.

Vervoort said the code process available to councils is limited in what it can do to manage poor behaviour or performance by councillors.

“Given the lack of available options to have the initial penalties complied with, Hamilton City Council is not pursuing this matter further.

“This does not change the outcome of the code of conduct process, which found that the complaints identified material breaches of the code.”

The council had passed a resolution to review the code and this was being progressed by staff, Vervoort added.

Deputy mayor Angela O’Leary said at the time that she, Vervoort and the council’s legal team had made the decision not to pursue things against Bydder.