As Jim Boult’s son, James, once told him, ‘you’ve done alright for the son of a tailor from Invercargill’.
Jim, who’s just celebrated his 71st birthday, decided to put his hand up for the mayoralty in 2016 — as he’s said before, he was driven to
give something back to the community that had been so good to him and his family.
While not universally popular as mayor, there’d be few who could argue just how much he’s done for Queenstown, particularly since 2020 when the carpet was ripped from underneath us as Covid made its unwelcome arrival.
Reflecting on his time, the work he and the council have done since then is what he’s most proud of.
‘‘If I look back on that, I don’t think we could have done anything better.
‘‘I think we did exactly the right things — we looked after the migrant folk, we did every thing we could to support the community, and we went to government and got a lot of support.
‘‘If you take shovel-ready, the diversification fund, etc, etc, we got everything we possibly could squeezed out of the lemon.’’
It wasn’t Jim’s first rodeo dealing with a crisis of that magnitude.
In 2004, he was asked to become a government-appointed director to Christchurch Airport’s board and, in late 2008, ‘‘we lost our CEO’’.
The board asked Jim if he’d be interested in becoming the ‘‘temporary replacement’’, steering the ship for ‘‘a couple of months’’.
‘‘That was January, 2009.
‘‘I was there until the end of 2013.’’
When he first started, the airport was undertaking a ‘‘massive’’ terminal rebuild.
‘‘And then, of course, we had the earthquakes, and I just really couldn’t go — plus, I was really enjoying it.
‘‘It was hard, it was difficult, but I was the right person, in the right place, at the right time.’’
There are parallels, he says, between that period and what Queenstown’s been through over the past two-and-a-half years.
‘‘In Christchurch, they had 11,000 earthquakes over that period following, and you never knew when the earthquakes were going to finish and you’d get back some semblance of normality.
‘‘It was a little bit like here [with Covid] — we never knew when our economy was going to come back, when people would be allowed to come back in.
‘‘It’s that uncertainty factor, all I can see is the dark [in the] tunnel, show me the light.’’
Jim and his wife, Karen, who celebrate 40 years of marriage this year, relocated to Queenstown from Rotorua shortly after they wed — ‘‘we packed our worldly goods into an old Ford Falcon stationwagon and a trailer and moved south’’.
They started out as owners of fashion retail Cherry Modes, at the top of The Mall — ‘‘it didn’t work out well for me,’’ he laughs.
‘‘Let’s just say I did the books, and dreamt up cunning plans.’’
They sold up about four years later and after Jim attended a Bob Jones property seminar in Dunedin, a gift from Karen, he signed up to buy The Trading Post in The Mall — where Winnies is now — for $400,000.
He sold it a year later for double that.
Several business ventures later — interests included the old Frankton Motor Lodge, O’Connell’s Hotel, the Rydges, Shotover Jet, Goldfields Jet, Dart River Jet Safaris and Shotover Jet Fiji — he tried his hand at property development, including Threepwood and Arrowtown’s Butel Park, before the Christchurch Airport gig came up.
Through that role he worked closely with majority share holder Christchurch City Council, so had a fair idea of what being Queenstown’s
mayor would be like.
But, after his election in 2016, he says he appreciated how ‘‘torturous the process is’’ in terms of local government.
‘‘That is not, in any way, a criticism of people, it is simply the process that you have to go through.’’
He’s copped his fair share of flak, too.
‘‘I’m blessed with a bit of a thick skin, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say some of the criticism bites, but probably more so on Karen, James and [daughter] Victoria.
‘‘They didn’t react well to unfair criticism of me, and some of the social media stuff which was just unbelievable.
‘‘To those folk, yeah, you can sit behind your keyboard and say what you bloody well like, but if you’ve really got the guts, and you really want to do some thing about it, stand for council.’’
As he readies to hop on a plane on Saturday for a much-needed break, Jim says he’d like to be remembered as a mayor who was always available and who led the council to get, generally, the best outcomes possible.
‘‘I look at some councils around the country, and they are continually fighting … our council, while we certainly didn’t agree on everything, we did it in a civil fashion, and we got the job done, so I’d like to be remembered for having a steady hand on the tiller, I would think.’’
And to whomever will wear the chains after Saturday’s election results are finalised, Boult hopes they continue working on the controversial
bed tax, which is now back on the table.
‘‘I worry about the funding model for local government going forward; I think it’s broken.
‘‘Our way of fixing it is the bed tax.
‘‘Government is open to it, but it needs to be addressed.’’
He also hopes they’re mindful the mayor is there to represent everybody, “not just the people who have supported you, and whose ideals you might agree with”.
“You have to listen to everyone, and take a balanced view of what is best for the district as a whole.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’d have loved Ladies Mile to stay like it is, but for the greater good of the community, we should develop it.
“I had to swallow the pill and get on with it.”
And, on Project Manawa, council’s planned civic and cultural centre on the Stanley Street site, Boult urges the next council to take a long-term view, and consider what people will want to look at on that site 40 years from now.
“[Would you rather see] a block of apartments, or a wonderful civic centre, with a performing arts centre, a visual arts centre, a library and a council building?”
As to whether council offices should, instead, be located at Frankton in future: “I have zero support for moving it [there].”
“We have around 300 employees, all of them support the local businesses in town.
“If we moved out of town, half the consultants who are left in town would move with us.
“The town would be denuded of commercial tenants; it would rip the guts out of a lot of retailers in town.”
