Councils are warning people to get their local body nominations in urgently, or they could face costly by-elections.
Photo: RNZ
Nominations close at midday for the lowest number of local body positions in New Zealand's history.
Councils said nominations have been slow to roll in for some positions, but outgoing councillors and new candidates said local bodies were still important to ordinary people.
Mangawhai businessman Peter Wethey said when he told people he was standing for Kaipara District Council in Northland, they told him he was brave.
A long and bitter wrangle over the coastal town's costly wastewater scheme has divided the community.
"This has put a number of good and probably well-qualified people off from putting their name up to stand for council. Public commentary around the district here from sectors of the Mangawhai community have been quite personal, they've played the man rather than his ball and I think this has ended up creating divisions within the community, there's not doubt about that."
It will be Kaipara's first election in six years, after the government sacked the debt-riddled council following the cost blowout in the wastewater scheme and appointed commissioners in 2012
Mr Wethey said it was a crucial time for the council and he wanted to be part of it.
"That's one of the things I think the new council and certainly I would have as an objective is to heal those divisions, so they can be a bit more united to go into the future."
Mr Wethey will be vying for one of nearly 1600 local body positions.
Local Government New Zealand said it was the smallest figure in history but Dale Ofsoske of Election Services, who has been an electoral officer for 30 years, said even so was getting tougher to fill the positions.
"People's lives have got busier. The impacts of local government on them is probably not fully appreciated and we'd really like to turn that around and get what actually councils achieve for ordinary people and therefore highlight the importance of having the right people elected to run councils."
Outgoing Tasman Dictrict councillor and former Motueka community board member Jack Inglis said the right people to run councils were business people but they were too busy.
"Council to me is a very big business and they lack real top business people in there but they say they haven't got the time. All the people I've seen who've stood for council who've been running businesses have half pie lost their businesses."
He said he would not recommend standing for a community board.
"They have a place but they don't have the power. They can make recommendations but if the council hasn't got the finance and the money to do what they're recommending, they can't do it can they?"
But Wellington Councillor Ray Ahipene-Mercer said community activists could make a difference.
The row that had erupted over Island Bay's contentious cycleway was a good example.
"A residents' association, for instance, has formed in the Island Bay area where it was basically absent because people are really up in arms about what's happened in Island Bay."
After 16 years as a councillor Mr Ahipene-Mercer said he was proud of what he had done in the environment and for the arts.
He planned to go back to his life as a guitar maker and musician, but he wanted party politics gone from council meetings.
"When a councillor as I've heard say to my face in a meeting 'I don't care what advice the officers have given us my party stands for this and this is what I'm gonna vote for- - that's deeply frustrating."
