Mayor and deputy mayor Mike Pettit and Jo Davies-Colley.
New Cambridge Community Board chair Charlotte FitzPatrick wants to build a bridge between the community and Waipā District Council.
Cambridge Community Board chair Charlotte FitzPatrick confers with Waipā chief executive Steph O’Sullivan. Photo Chris Gardner
“I have an interest in community relations and engagement. I run my business here, live in Cambridge, my kids go to school here,” she said after being elected on Friday.
Cambridge News 6 November 2025
FitzPatrick, who topped the board election poll, is director of communications and public relations company Belle PR which she founded in Cambridge in 2021 after working for two years as the council’s communications and engagement manager.
“We need to convene as a group and set our collective vision and goals for the next three years,” she said.
The board will seek significant input into the council’s reset Cambridge Connections project, annual and long-term plans.
“We need to take the community on that journey,” FitzPatrick said.
The board’s first meeting will be December 4.
Earlier in the day Waipā mayor Mike Pettit named former community board chair and top polling Cambridge ward councillor Jo Davies-Colley as his deputy.
Jo Davies-Colley
Clare St Pierre
Pre-empting a question from Pirongia Kakepuku Ward Councillor Clare St Pierre about a Cambridge mayor and deputy, Pettit said: “The deputy mayor’s position was something that, like the mayor and Māori ward positions “goes across the district”.
“It is not from one area; it never has been. I’ve chosen someone I have got absolute faith in, hasn’t been on council before, but has shown absolute leadership and dedication to the district and that dedication has really come in the form over the last three years of turning up to council meetings when this person did not need to, at that point did not represent the district, represented a town within that district, so these things get noted,” Pettit said.
St Pierre wanted to know Te Awamutu and the southwestern rural area would still have access and the ear of those at the top.
“How are you going to make sure that those communities won’t be left out in the cold by not having direct representation in those two top influential roles?”
Waipa mayor Mike Pettit
Pettit said he had always promised to put the best people in place for the district.
Where they lived was “very second to me” to their ability.
“I don’t think there’s been a mayor across this side of the district for 24 years – the job is 60,000 wide at this time and it is across the district.”
After the meeting both Pettit and Davies-Colley told The News they would make an effort to get into rural Waipā and meet with community members.
Davies-Colley said St Pierre’s question was fair.
“The focus now for me is less about Cambridge and more about the Waipā district,’ she said. “I am very honoured. My focus is going to be supporting the mayor the best way I can. I am excited to get to work.”
Mayor and deputy mayor Mike Pettit and Jo Davies-Colley. Photo: Chris Gardner
