The community board was not able to fill one of its two Mt Herbert subdivision seats during nominations, making it the only board out of seven not to attract enough candidates.
Independent candidate Howard Needham is set to be elected for the seat unopposed, and a single by-election will be held in the new year to fill the remaining vacancy.
However, Mr Needham is also running for the Banks Peninsula Ward council seat and if he is elected, his position as a community board member will also be deemed vacant.
City council electoral officer Jo Daly believed it was the first “single by-election being held to fill two vacant community board seats.”
Mr Needham called the lack of candidates “disappointing.”
“It’s community representation, and that’s not what we’re getting,” he said.
Mr Needham is a Charteris Bay resident and runs an internet sales business. His aim is to stop rate rises and put and end to closed-door meetings.
Only three of the eight members who had seats on the community board last term are standing for re-election and seven new candidates, including Mr Needham, are standing.
Low pay has been cited as one of the reasons the community board did not attract enough candidates. In its last term, members were paid less than half of what inner-city board members receive.
As it stands, community board members are set to receive $9864 and the chairperson $19,729 after the elections.
But Mr Needham said income played no part in his decision to stand for the council and community board seats.
“I didn’t even look at that. I’ve been here for five years and I love this area, so I looked at how I could get more involved with the community.”
However, Charteris Bay Residents’ Association secretary Bill Studholme said Mr Needham has made no contact with the group in the lead-up to the elections.
He said the association was “extremely well served” by former Mt Herbert representatives Felix Dawson and John McLister.
“We would rather somebody we knew, but if there’s nobody there then we will just come across as some noisy outsiders,” Mr Studholme said.
As the current remuneration model is set by population, community boards with bigger populations get higher pay.
However, that may change after the newly-elected city council decides on the allocation of a $1,843,200 governance pool.
