Mayoralty bid fuelled by frustration over lack of transparency
Lydia Gliddon has always loved to cook, but now she is focused on perfecting a new recipe – becoming the next mayor.
The 39-year-old former café owner and first-term Malvern Ward councillor will challenge Mayor Sam Broughton in October's local body elections. She is the first sitting councillor to do so since Broughton was elected in 2016.
While well-known in Malvern, Gliddon acknowledges the challenge of connecting with residents across the district.
As she prepares her campaign, she aims to meet as many people as possible before deciding in July whether she will put her eggs in one basket and just run for the mayoralty and not her existing Malvern seat as well.
Gliddon's love for cooking began with her grandmother's biscuit recipes. At 15, she represented Darfield High School in a cooking competition at Westfield Riccarton. After finishing high school, she managed The Daily Grind café in Christchurch.
'I've always been into cooking and food.'
In 2016, she bought the Express Yourself Café in Darfield, renaming it The Fat Beagle after her dog, Norman.
'It was like our own wee community, everybody knew each other, customers knew each other,' Gliddon said.
'Norman was the fat beagle and the logo was modelled on him, and how he looked at you when you were cooking in the kitchen.'
'He used to scale the pantry and pull food out. I got home one day and he'd stolen a bag of flour and licked it into the carpet.
'I spent $800 at the vet because he'd hurt his back scaling the pantry.'
During her five years as owner, Gliddon rebranded the café, grew the team from seven to 13 staff, and weathered the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eight months after selling the café, she successfully ran for a Malvern Ward seat in 2022 – a move driven by a strong passion for her community.
'I've always had this element of public service. You don't just live in a place, you live in a community, and you need to give back to that.
'I need a purpose and I need something to do,' Gliddon said.
Alongside her work in hospitality, Gliddon also spent years working on farms.
Born in Kirwee, she moved around the Malvern area with her family before settling on a small block of land with her husband Matt and six-year-old daughter Hazel. They currently raise about 40 sheep and 20 cows each year.
'I love being outside, I love the land, I love animals, and they all go hand in hand together.'
At 18, she trained as a snowboard and ski instructor at Mt Hutt, later working a season at Canyons Resort in Utah.
On returning to New Zealand, she split her time between winters at Mt Hutt and summers on her grandparents' farm. Eventually, she transitioned to full-time farm work, while keeping winter sports as a hobby.
She also managed Gnomes ski shop in Darfield for eight years before buying the café.
At 20, Gliddon became the youngest-ever president of the Kirwee Netball Club, where she played from age 16 until about four years ago.
'There was an ultimatum that went on in our house (to stop playing netball) after my second knee surgery.'
She now helps run the Future Ferns netball programme with Springfield/Sheffield Netball, the same programme her daughter Hazel participates in.
In her two-and-a-half years on council, Gliddon said she has grown significantly but also become increasingly frustrated.
She is proud of efforts like helping save the Sheffield pool, which is now moving to community ownership after facing demolition.
'I firmly believe that if it wasn't for me pushing for that and opening the doors for the community, they probably would have had a demoed pool by now.'
But alongside her growth on the council, her frustration also has increased, triggering the mayoral bid.
'I always believe that you don't sit around and moan about something, you do something.'
Gliddon said the lack of transparency with the 2024-34 Long Term Plan (LTP) was a particular point of frustration
She raised concerns about the Waikirikiri Alpine to Ocean Trail – a $20 million cycleway – which was not included in public consultation documents, despite its scale.
Gliddon pushed for the project to be listed as a key decision in the LTP and reiterated her concerns during council debates.
'I said 'wouldn't it just be better if we were open and transparent', and we would have got better feedback from people.
'The actual concept is great but I don't think our general ratepayer should be paying for it.'
While the council eventually decided not to fully fund the project, it retained $5m for planning and to keep the cycleway project alive.
Despite misgivings, Gliddon voted for the LTP, as it included key projects she had fought for.
However, she opposed spending on items such as $3.7m for expanding council offices, $9m for an economic development strategy, and $5m for investigating low-nitrate water sources.
'I fought for a lot of things within that LTP, and there were a lot of things I don't agree with. I felt like, at the end, to say no to the LTP was saying no to the decisions I had fought so hard to be in there.'
While she did accept last year's rates rise of 14.9%, Gliddon took issue with the lack of a public consultation on the 2025 annual plan – a key checkpoint between long term plans, which are reviewed every three years.
Last year, the council controversially decided to skip consultation for 2025, leaving no opportunity for community feedback on the latest rates rise.
At the moment, Selwyn is looking at a 14.2% average rates increase, pending any changes resulting from the establishment of a water services council controlled organisation (WSCCO). Under the new model, water billing (excluding stormwater) will be handled by the WSCCO rather than the council.
Gliddon was one of three councillors to vote against the proposal.
'For council to make a decision not to have an annual plan is not good enough.
'We're not a private business. We are there to act on behalf of the community,' she said.
Gliddon said even without a consultation, councillors should have had a chance to review the budgets before they were set in June.
'A lot of other councils have reviewed their annual plans. Some of them may not have consulted on it, but they've reviewed it, and they've adjusted their rates.'
In April, Gliddon was also one of five councillors to vote against establishing the WSCCO. She argued the model would be too expensive and lacked the benefits of scale that would come with regional partnerships.
She said she understands why many in the community are upset, especially after 86.1% of public submissions opposed the WSCCO.
'I actually feel like a lot of that was just dismissed and pushed to the side, and I actually found a lot of that really valid. So, of course the community is going to feel hurt.'
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