Central Hawke's Bay District Mayor Will Foley says the best part of his job is representing the community. Photo / Linda Hall

Central Hawke’s Bay’s mayor says that although his role “consumes” him, he loves everything about it.

It’s been almost 10 months since Will Foley was elected mayor of the rural district, 50km south of Hastings, defeating incumbent Alex Walker, who had held the seat for nine years, by 1645 votes.

Foley said he “absolutely loves the job”, but everything else has taken a back seat.

“My family and business don’t get the same attention. This job consumes me, you just can’t shut off.

“I leave the office or wherever I have been dealing with council business and everything keeps going on in my mind the whole time.”

He said he felt he had big shoes to fill when he stepped into the role.

“After nine years, Alex was highly confident in her role. She would have known everything and everyone inside out, how everything works, and so, yeah, I definitely felt the pressure of trying to get to that level.”

At first, he said he leaned on the council’s chief executive Doug Tate, but when Tate left in March he felt like he was “the only one left standing and everyone was looking to me for leadership and direction”.

“I embrace that because if you don’t hear from your people, it’s really hard to represent them and that’s a core part of the job.”

Foley said he was proud of the feedback from the community and staff.

“Lots of people have told me I’m doing a good job. I feel like I’m still very new, but I’m proud of being successful in the election and putting my own mark on the role and being the mayor that the people elected me to be.”

He said the hardest part of the reforms was the lack of detail and timeframe.

“It’s important to us that the final format retains some local decision-making. Otherwise we risk an entity going further away from us and not understanding what we need here.”

He said the best part of his job was representing the people.

“Coming from a regional council experience where I was representing CHB, this is just such a better form of representing the people because you are closer to them, you’re more engaged with them, and I feel way more influential, not just this role, but this council.

“I love this organisation, it’s got a real good heart, good culture, and a good family feel to it.”

Asked if he was to become the last mayor of Central Hawke’s Bay because of amalgamation, what he would like his legacy to be, Foley said it would be that the “new future we are going into is the right one for CHB and the region”.

“We don’t want to look back and think that was the wrong move. It’s a huge weight on my shoulders”.

Foley said water security was also a huge issue for the community.

“This is where I see the benefits of amalgamation. I was president of Federated Farmers when the dam was being planned at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council.

“We have seen it waver around and then start to get a bit more traction lately.”

He said everyone had been “sitting in their corners” instead of thinking what was best for the region.

He said there had been a general trend in the region of reduced water allocation, but no alternate supply.

“That’s not sustainable if we want to keep up the productivity of the region and the primary sector, so we’ve either got to do something about it, or we’ll start to see the primary sector decline, particularly when we get hit by another big drought.”

He said the impacts of McCain’s and the Wattie’s Hastings packing site closures were starting to be felt, with farmers not investing in new-season crops. That meant less work for contractors, with ripple effects expected to continue through what would have been harvest time.

When he has time to relax, Foley said he tries to catch up with chores on his farm and spend time with his family.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.