Tony Lepper was born in Hawke’s Bay, where his parents were orchardists, but has lived in Central Otago since his 20s.
He has been on the Central Otago District Council since its creation in 1989.
After two terms as mayor he wants to stay for one more term to "finish the job".
Why are you standing for mayor?
I came into office two terms ago saying I wanted to do two terms and if I felt really invigorated to do three terms I would.
And I am extremely invigorated, because we’re partway through lots of things.
We’re at the construction stage of a whole lot of infrastructure projects.
The first one being the new water supply for Alex.
We’re doing some stuff at the wastewater plant in Alex now.
We’re doing some stuff in the Cromwell wastewater plant; we’ve got a major upgrade of that to do.
We’re connecting Bannockburn to Cromwell.
There’s all these things which have been signalled in our long-term plan and I want to start to implement those and put in place the tools to minimise any risk those projects have to our council, and I have the skills to do that.
Will you be a full-time mayor and why?
I am a full-time mayor. I do have another job where I work from 7am until 10am, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a full-time mayor.
I’ve got that phone; I’m always available no matter who rings me or when.
So I get into the office here at about 10.30am and I certainly work more than 40 hours in this job.
My other job involves me working with orchardists, farmers, contractors, builders, lawyers, all sorts of people.
It’s an opportunity to meet and deal with real people and hear real issues from them while I’m out there in my workplace.
What position do you think the district is in?
It’s going really, really well. I don’t want to use the word boom, but we’re growing.
We’re growing at a pace which I think we can handle.
We’ve got pretty much full employment; we’ve got building happening all through Central Otago; we’ve got house prices and interests everywhere increasing.
It’s exciting times.
And the rail trail and other trails that are being designed will only help that.
Cromwell and Clyde have gone through a good period and we’re now seeing that trickling down to Alexandra with a subdivision going on to the market in the next week or so.
I understand all the sections in Omakau are almost signed up and we’re hearing stories about rising house price rises in Ranfurly.
What are three issues facing the incoming council?
The first one is definitely the building of those infrastructure projects and keeping an eye on those.
The second one is the implementation of our audit and risk committee, which meets for the first time under its new independent chairperson tomorrow [last Tuesday], and that’s exciting because that doesn’t look just at the risk of those projects, it looks at all the risks our council faces, and we’ve never done that before and that’s something we’ve set up under me and it’s about to happen.
The third one is relooking at the way we do tourism and who pays for that, who’s getting the benefit from that and whether we should change the way we do that or stick to what we’ve got.
We think we’re doing it pretty well — we might just need to tweak it.
So we’ll want to talk to people about that.
What is one thing you would like to have achieved by the end of your next term?
I think that review of tourism. I certainly think we want the Alex water supply finished.
And that’ll be a good way of gauging whether we’re controlling those projects and delivering things on time and on budget.
And that’ll give us the confidence that the others can be rolled out after that one.
Tony Lepper
Age: 60.
Occupation: Central Otago mayor and manager of the Earnscleugh Irrigation Company.
Marital status: Married.
Council experience: Six years as Central Otago mayor, 21 years as a Central Otago district councillor.
Describe yourself in three words: Practical, effective, experienced.
