Thames-Coromandel Mayor Len Salt says he’s not usually the type of person to sign off an email with “go f**k yourself”, but after witnessing a barrage of abuse aimed at his council staff, he wanted to make his stance clear.
“It’s very rare for me,” he told The Profile, “but if you want to threaten my staff, if you want to threaten our people in council, then that’s what you can expect.”
A resurfaced email from June, 2023, was published on a social media page showing the mayor dropping the F-bomb after a constituent asked for the private details of council staffers.
The Profile has seen the full email in which the sender requests “the full names, positions held in the TCDC corporation, and the private addresses of all the legal team, rates team, corporate services group”. They also include council chief executive Aileen Lawrie in their request for information “for the sole purpose of prosecution procedures”.
Mayor Salt then replied: “Morena… Please keep a record of my reply in case you need to refer to it for legal reasons or future court cases. My official response, as Mayor of Thames-Coromandel District Council, to your request for personal details of staff names and addresses, is this. Go f**k yourself”.
Mayor Len said there was always a possibility the email would resurface, but in truth, he had forgotten about it.
He said he wanted the sender to be “very, very clear” about what his response was, and that “there was no ambiguity”.
He also said he had since received support from mayors from across the country, who praised him for “pushing back” against the “aggression” local councils have put up with for the past year.
Anyone outraged about his choice of words was missing the point, he said.
“The point is not that a random mayor somewhere in the country used an F-word… the level of aggression and abusive behaviour directed to our staff and elected members is the discussion they should be having.
“This was not something I would do on a regular basis, but [people] need to focus on the real issue, and if my statement serves to highlight the real issue of aggression and abuse towards our people, then it’s served its purpose.”
An email also viewed by The Profile shows one recent example of council-aimed abuse.
Sent on December 22, 2023, by a different constituent, the email was in response to a TCDC staffer providing an update on a Powerco application and said: “You’re a heartless f**king b****h sending this out the day before Christmas. Rot in hell”.
“This is happening on multiple levels,” Mayor Salt said. “Social media, emails, face to face contact across customer service counters, in council meetings and community board meetings, in public information sessions organised by council staff, and in public meetings attended by councillors and elected members.
“I think we will see this conversation move through Local Government New Zealand and become more of a topic councils want to start addressing and pushing back on.”
The man responsible for the resurfaced email was Steve Hart, who vied for the mayoral chains at the 2022 local body elections. Though he didn’t compose the email that elicited the F-bomb response, he said his intention was to raise the question whether Mayor Salt’s reaction was “appropriate”.
“It seems today that sort of language is mainstream and I just thought: is it? Is it appropriate? Especially from someone holding public office?” he said. “I thought [the post] might get a bit of a reaction, and it’s good that it has because it puts it out there.”
Steve said it was “absolutely not” the right response from the mayor.
“Why not have an intellectual discussion about the subject, rather than lay abuse and insult in that matter?”
When asked whether it was an appropriate response as a “push back” against aggression aimed at council staff, Steve said constituents themselves were the ones pushing back against “inadequacy”.
“You’d expect the abuse, and the abuse is getting louder and louder because of the lack of performance. Does everybody sit back and take it? Or do they say something about it? And who do they say something to?”
The sender of the June, 2023, email could not be reached for comment.
BY KELLEY TANTAU
