Mayor of Grey

The Mayor of Grey, often referred to as the Mayor of Greymouth, officiates over the Grey District of New Zealand which is administered by the Grey District Council with its seat in Greymouth. The current mayor is Tania Gibson. Two predecessors to this office were the mayor of Greymouth, officiating over the Greymouth Borough Council from 1868, and from 1877 the chairman of the Grey County Council.

The Greymouth Borough was constituted in 1868 under the Municipal Corporations Act, 1867. This covered the urban area of Greymouth.^[1]

After provincial government had been abolished in 1876, counties were formed in the following year. One of those was Grey County that covered an area around Greymouth.^[2] The first chairman of Grey County was Arthur Guinness.^[3]

Greymouth Borough and Grey County were abolished in the 1989 local government reforms, when the areas became part of Grey District. Since then, the head of the administration has been the mayor of Grey.

The first elections were held in Greymouth Borough on 26 August 1868, when nine councillors were elected.^[4] Even before the councillors met for the first time, it was discovered that the legislation required for three of them to retire by rotation on 10 September.^[5][6][7] All three councillors stood for re-election,^[8] but one of them was replaced by Edward Masters.^[9] At the first meeting of the council in the following week, Masters was elected the first mayor of Greymouth by his fellow councillors.^[10][11]

Barry Dallas was mayor of Greymouth from 1966 to 1968, and from 1980 until the borough's abolition in 1989. He then became the inaugural mayor of the new Grey District.^[12]

	Name	Portrait	Term	Notes
1	Edward Masters		1868–1870	[11]
2	Joseph Kilgour		1870	[13]
3	Edward Wickes		1871–1872	[13]
4	George Glen		1873	[13]
5	William Simpson Smith		1874	[13]
6	George William Moss		1875–1876	[13]First Ratepayer Election
7	Francis Hamilton		1877–1878	[13]
8	Richard Nancarrow		1879–1881	[13]
9	James Barkley		1882–1883	[13][14]
10	Fritz Carl Dupre		1884	[13]
11	John Griffiths Thomas		1885	[13]
8	Richard Nancarrow		1886	second period[13]
12	Joseph Petrie		1887–1888	[13]Mayor paid 100pounds annually. Last Borough to pay in NZ
13	John Mitchell		1889–1890	[13]
14	Andrew Matheson		1891–1892
15	William Robert Kettle		1893–1894	[13][15]
16	Frederick Barrington Waters		1894	[14]
17	Felix Campbell		1894–1895	[13][16]
18	Jacob Theodore Skoglund		1896–1898	[13]
14	Andrew Matheson		1899–1903	second period
19	Jesse Steer		1903–1904	[13][17]
20	James Andrew Petrie		1904–1907	[17][18]
12	Joseph Petrie		1907–1908	second period[18][19]
21	Thomas Coates		1908–1910	[20][21]
22	Alfred Charles Russell		1910–1912	[21][22]
23	George Edward Perkins		1912–1917	[22][23]
24	James Daniel Lynch		1917–1923	[14][24]
25	William Henry Parfitt		1923–1927	[14]
26	John Webber Greenslade		1927–1935	[25] 9 years service
27	William Meldrum		1935–1938	[26]
28	Fred Kitchingham		1938–1947	[27] 9 years service
29	Fred Boustridge		1947–1950
30	Frederick Lovell Turley		1950–1953
31	Frederick William Baillie		1954–1965	[14][28] 12 years service
32	Barry Dallas		1965–1968
33	Ossie Jackson		1968–1980	12 years service
32	Barry Dallas		1980–1989	second period

	Name	Portrait	Term	Notes
1	Barry Dallas		1989–1991	[34] 14 years service of Greymouth and Grey District
2	Ron Hibbs		1991–1998	[34]
3	Kevin Brown		1998–2004	[35]
4	Tony Kokshoorn		2004–2019	[35] 15 years service. Longest-serving mayor of Greymouth and Grey District
5	Tania Gibson		2019–present	[35] Greymouth's first woman mayor