Mayor of Hamilton
In 1976, Beetham was elected Mayor of Hamilton in a byelection to replace Mike Minogue, who had resigned to take up a seat in Parliament. One of his early ideas as Mayor was to finance municipal projects with interest-free "rates vouchers", but the council, dominated by his opponents, passed a 20 percent rates increase instead. His frustrations caused by political gridlock, as well as the difficulty of simultaneously leading a national political party while serving as a Mayor (a post generally expected to be apolitical in New Zealand), were factors in his decision not to seek a second term as Mayor in 1977. Ross Jansen succeeded him.
Read more about this topic: Bruce Beetham
Famous quotes containing the words mayor and/or hamilton:
“Break up the printing presses and you break up rebellion.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Mayor (Thurston Hall)
“None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)