"I was given a day to think about it. I was a bit reluctant around the time commitment, but everyone has that excuse," Curtis Pannett said.
Mr Pannett had always had an interest in how things worked and had attended meetings about districtisation, where he shared his views with then-Mayor Tim Cadogan and Teviot member of the Central Otago District Council Sally Feinerman.
However, there was inspiration closer to home.
In 1995 he was elected to the Roxburgh Community Board and served until his death.
None of Mr Pannett’s three sons took up the reins of local government.
Seeing their father come home from a day on the farm and then spend the evening on the telephone with council business may have been a factor, Curtis said.
While today, thanks to technology, phone calls did not have to be made in the house, they still took just a long and there were now emails to deal with.
Mr Pannett left the Teviot Valley when he went to boarding school. University and overseas travel followed until he returned to the family property in 2016.
Living away brought home to him how good life was in the valley.
"You realise you don’t have everything as good as you would like it, but you realise on balance it’s pretty good round here."
With Queenstown airport 90 minutes away, and Los Angeles just two flights away, there were a lot of rural communities way more isolated, he said.
Making the Teviot a place people want to come to rather than leave was important, he said.
"We need to continue to make opportunities for people to live and work in the area. Make sure it continues to be a place of opportunity for people, a place people want to move to not move out of."
He was sympathetic towards ratepayers facing rate increases.
"We need to make sure we are not just going out and spending money on vanity projects. A lot of people don’t have the money for rate rises to be continually going up in the double digits. It does hurt people. It has got to be balanced between making sure we are improving the livability of the valley but balanced with moderate rate rises."
And it is not just a philosophical argument for him. He, wife Anna and their 6-month-old daughter live in the house his grandfather built.
"That’s one of the things I see as a reasonably large landowner. W pay about $20,000 in council rates just to CODC. When we see 10% increase this year, it impacts us."
