Wayne Brown vowed to spend time with his wife Toni, right, and family members yesterday. Photo / Jed Bradley
New Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is staying out of the public limelight on his first day leading the country’s biggest city to spend time with his family.
In an exclusive letter published in today’s Herald on Sunday, Brown said he owed his wife and family a cafe brunch on Karangahape Rd, a minute’s walk from his central city apartment.
After brunch, Brown, a keen surfer, said he may take a quick trip to Piha on Auckland’s West Coast.
The new mayor declined an invitation for a sit-down interview with the Herald to discuss his emphatic win over the Labour-endorsed candidate Efeso Collins and early plans for the Super City.
He also pulled out of interviews with Newstalk ZB and TVNZ’s Q & A programme this morning.
The businessman and former Far North District mayor also has a waterfront home at Mangōnui, a small community north of Kerikeri in Northland.
The 76-year-old, whose message to voters was to Fix Auckland, has asked council officers to provide him with a full briefing tomorrow morning on the council’s books, their economic forecasts over the next three years, and all contingent liabilities and other risks.
He expects the briefing to cover the council, four council-controlled organisations (CCOs)
and other entities in which ratepayers have an interest.
This week, Brown plans to meet with all 20 councillors to congratulate them in person and to discuss how they can best help deliver the change Auckland voters have demanded.
For more on the local body elections:
• Live coverage: Local body election results – as they happened
• Interactive: Check all the mayoral and election results in every city/region
In his letter, Brown wrote he wants every councillor and member of the Independent Māori Statutory Board to have a role that interests and challenges them, and which is more meaningful than they have had before, with powers to make real decisions for which they will be directly accountable to voters.
Similarly, he wrote that he plans also to devolve more decision-making powers to the 21 Local Boards, given they are closest to the region’s communities.
