Stop button hit on three-way amalgamation

Then there was one. 

Carterton Mayor Ron Mark is the last one standing after first South Wairarapa hit pause, then Masterton bailed on talks about merging governance of the three districts.

The councils to the north and south of Carterton were both careful in their wording as they stepped away from the merger discussions, now on and off for the past 36 years.

South Wairarapa’s lead at the talks, now Acting Mayor Melissa Sadler-Futter, was quoted saying the south had “no appetite” to spend time and money on the project “until” there was evidence  amalgamation would provide better services and value.

Masterton Mayor Gary Caffell said in early March that his council was not going to continue “diverting valuable time, energy and resources away from critical priorities.”

Like Sadler-Futter, he left the door slightly ajar to future talks, adding the wrinkle that those discussions should be “initiated by the Local Government Commission,” in a statement to the Times Age newspaper. He added that “we (Masterton) are open to dialogue with the Local Government Commission, if they choose to broach the subject.”

That’s the first time a Wairarapa district has suggested only an outside agency could drive, or revive, future amalgamation talks – in other words that there would need to be some compulsion for any merger plans to return to the table.

Mark has a record of consistently supporting a regional grouping of the districts. During his last  time as Carterton mayor, he was one of the three then in office to sign off on a Wairarapa “unitary authority.” 

It was scrapped at the time for the then-preferred Super City plan to amalgame Wellington-Wairarapa-Kapiti. It did not proceed.

ends