Invercargill's new mayor Nobby Clark has detailed his plans to slash $50 million from the council's budget.
It follows Clark's decisive victory in the Invercargill's mayoral race, where he unseated incumbent Sir Tim Shadbolt.
The former deputy mayor was elected with a 3000 vote majority, on 6537 votes, ahead of radio broadcaster Marcus Lush who got 3785 votes.
Sir Tim spent 24 years in the top job but only received 847 votes in this year's election.
On TVNZ's Q+A this morning, Clark outlined his plan to reduce the city's $115 million budget by $50 million.
He said the upgrade of the inner city budget had an extra $14 million that "we don't need to spend". Clark has also promised to ditch a $26 million plan to upgrade Invercargill's administration building.
"Why would you update an old building when you don't know what the future of local government is?"
Clark said it "doesn't make any sense" to invest in the building when Invercargill's three councils are likely to be amalgamated.
A further $10 million will come from cancelling the proposed storage facility ahead of the new museum build.
Clark said his appointment to the top job comes off the back of Invercargill voters' dissatisfaction with the current state of the city.
"Some of the day to day stuff just doesn't get done. And so people are a bit lost in that." He has also promised to reduce centralisation, saying voters wanted to "claw back some local control."
"People want localisation, so they don't want their Three Water assets going west."
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