Waikato Regional Council chair Pamela Storey will stand for a third term.
Catching up: At the opening of Fieldays 2024 were from left Waipā mayor Susan O’Regan, Taupō MP Louise Upston, Fieldays president Jenni Vernon, Taranaki-King Country MP Barbara Kuriger and Waikato Regional Council chair Pamela Storey. Photo: Mary Anne Gill.
“I definitely intend to stand for re-election in the North Waikato Constituency,” Storey told The News.
The American dairy farmer was first elected to the council in 2019 and returned for a second term in 2022 when her fellow councillors elected her chair.
“In terms of the chair, I would love the opportunity to continue to have a leadership role for next term,” she said. “That’s up to the councillors who sit around the table.”
While not technically a mayor, Storey has enjoyed a seat on the Waikato Mayoral Forum and, while having no water assets like the region’s city and district councils, has been part of the conversation around Waikato Water Done Well.
She was particularly proud of how the complex region of city and district councils had navigated through working together in the past term.
“As a member of the mayoral forum I can see the benefit,” she said.
Storey and her husband Ian have owned and operated a dairy farm in Te Hoe, north Waikato since 2001, merging three farms into one operation.
The couple met in Seattle on a blind date. She had graduated from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and had worked at a nuclear power plant and was then at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state.
Moving from there to the Waikato, where her husband was the fourth-generation dairy farmer on the land, was a big upheaval for her but one she has never regretted.
