The 2024

Tauranga City Council Tauranga City Council is the Territorial authorities of New Zealand, territorial authority for the List of cities in New Zealand, city of Tauranga, New Zealand. The council consists of nine councillors, each elected from one of nine wards, and ...

election was held via

postal voting Postal voting is voting in an election where ballot papers are distributed to electors (and typically returned) by Mail, post, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling place, polling station or electronically via an electronic voti ...

from 29 June 2024 to 20 July 2024. These were the first elections for the Tauranga City Council since

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

, following the appointment by the Minister of Local Government of a Crown Commission to oversee Tauranga City Council's governance responsibilities on 9 February 2021. The Tauranga City Council used the

single transferable voting The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vo ...

system to elect the

Mayor of Tauranga The mayor of Tauranga is the head of local government in Tauranga, New Zealand's fifth-largest city. The mayor presides over the Tauranga City Council. The mayor is directly elected using the single transferable vote method. The current mayor i ...

and city councillors for a term that will last until the 2028 local elections. Tauranga City Council created nine electoral wards for these elections. There were eight general wards ( Mauao/Mount Maunganui, Arataki,

Pāpāmoa Papamoa or Papamoa Beach is a suburb of Tauranga, located about 11 kilometres from the city centre. It is the largest residential suburb in Tauranga. It is bordered to the west by Arataki and Mount Maunganui (east of Sunrise Avenue and Hibiscus ...

Welcome Bay Welcome Bay is a suburb of Tauranga, New Zealand. It is located from central Tauranga. Neighbouring suburbs include Hairini and Maungatapu. There are a number of schools in Welcome Bay, including three primary schools. The name Welcome Bay ...

, Matua-

Otūmoetai Otūmoetai is a suburb of Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand. The Otūmoetai peninsula includes both the Otūmoetai suburb, and the neighbouring suburbs of Matua, New Zealand, Matua and Bellevue, New Zealand, Bellevue. Hist ...

Bethlehem Bethlehem is a city in the West Bank, Palestine, located about south of Jerusalem, and the capital of the Bethlehem Governorate. It had a population of people, as of . The city's economy is strongly linked to Tourism in the State of Palesti ...

, Tauriko and Te Papa) and one Māori ward (Te Awanui, covering the entire city) which each returned one councillor.

Candidates

Nominations for candidates opened on 26 April 2024 and closed on 24 May 2024. The following 86 candidates have been confirmed to be running for the positions of mayor and the nine city councillors:

Mayor

Councillors

Te Awanui Māori ward

Arataki general ward

Bethlehem general ward

Matua-Otūmoetai general ward

Mauao/Mount Maunganui general ward

Pāpāmoa general ward

Tauriko general ward

Te Papa general ward

Welcome Bay general ward

Candidate events

Results

The official results of the election were released on 25 July. Voter turnout was 38.77%, which compares with a turnout of 40.28% at the 2019 election. Only one woman, Jen Scoular for the Mauao/Mount Maunganui ward, was elected to the council. Two former councillors, Steve Morris and Rick Curach, were re-elected. Mikaere Sydney was elected as councillor for Tauranga's first Māori ward Te Awanui, which the Tauranga commission had confirmed at a meeting in April 2021 following the passage of the

Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Act 2021 The Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Act, now repealed, was an Act of Parliament in New Zealand which eliminated the requirement for holding public referendums on the establishment of Māori wards and constitu ...

. Te Awanui is at risk of dissolution due to the National-led coalition government requiring local councils to hold binding referenda on Māori wards.

Notes

References

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Tauranga Tauranga (, Māori language for "resting place," or "safe anchorage") is a coastal city in the Bay of Plenty Region and the List of cities in New Zealand, fifth-most populous city of New Zealand, with an urban population of or roughly 3% of t ...

Council A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or natio ...