Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark has a counter on his phone that tells him how many days left until the end of his sentence.
He rates his time in the top job as a 6/10 and says being described as a “polarised character,” not helped by the code of conducts against him, made things messy during his term as Mayor.
“You can be a person that gets on fabulously well with everyone…but I’m not worried about people voting against me because they have a dislike of me, so long as I get the majority across the table,” he said.
Nobby convincingly won the election against Marcus Lush and always said he’d only give one term, before he retires.
He’s achieved everything he set out to do in his time as Mayor - getting the museum build underway, finalising the mall, keeping people with special needs in employment, keeping rates down and enabling council to be more transparent around the table.
He talks with passion about The Museum of Southland, and he’s excited for the city to have a futuristic build full of wonderful interactive stories about the region - its land, sea and sky.
He’s proud of Invercargill Central winning a national award, in what was the biggest demolition job in the country of a central business district - before its rebuild.
“It was a city that never used to have a heart. But some councillors didn’t want it. Now we have full occupancy and council will be in there too, as well as the first floor of the HWR Tower.”
Being Mayor wasn’t at all what Nobby expected. The long hours for a start (averaging 55-60 a week).
After several years as deputy as well - assisting former Mayor Sir Tim Shadbolt right through the deterioration of his health, Nobby’s also endured skin and thyroid cancer and major heart surgery.
At 75, he hasn’t done too badly, but admits he’s definitely not as fit as he would like to be.
He no longer has five year plan, “I just think everyday - what do I want to do to maintain happiness?”
He sat and watched a basketball game in the stadium by himself one night and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Once retired he and partner Karen are looking forward to travelling around the North Island in their camper for a few months. He admits the $9.50 daily hot chocolates might have to go once he loses the secure income.
You might also start to see him pop up as a volunteer around the city again. But in the meantime, there’s still a few months left in the big job. So what’s it like being Mayor of Invercargill?
“The thing I didn’t expect was how difficult at times with senior staff, it would be.”
Mayor Clark wasn’t taking a hit at anyone personally. He said that was common at most councils around the country.
Unless the Mayor took it back to his councillors to get a majority vote. Therein lies the struggle.
“The Mayor should be the primary driver of changes,” he said.
So Nobby Clark is ready to walk away (quietly? That’s not his style…) We shall see in October.
“There’s been a lot of things happening in our city that wouldn’t have happened without me being forceful…you can make quite a bit of difference to a city. But I’m too old for this job now.”