Twenty years ago on October 31 1989, the borough of Mount Maunganui was snuffed out by government decree.
The survivors of that administration, former politicians and their supporters will be meeting in the Mount on Saturday for a quiet reminiscence.
They will be talking about the good old days, when Mount Maunganui was a town with its own identity and its own style.

The Mount Maunganui Borough Council coat of arms.

The Mount had the odd distinction for a territorial local authority of running in the black – something the larger neighbour into which it was absorbed has never achieved.
While the complaints about the Mount's lack of footpaths and street lighting sometimes still linger, the then small town funded and built the Te Maunga wastewater treatment plant, which was promptly annexed by Tauranga. Mount Maunganui ratepayers also paid for their own water supply catchment and plantation forest.
Critics say the town was built by leveraging the commercial and industrial ratepayers, but Mount Maunganui was a forerunner in some areas and applied the user pays philosophy before it was fashionable.
They will also be talking about the idiosyncrasies of some of the characters involved in the former borough, some of whom are now dead.
And there is still unfinished business. When former Mount borough councilor Nobby Clarke became Mayor of Tauranga City, the 1992-95 council decided to name an intersection in Mount Maunganui after former borough engineer Graeme Fraser, deceased. That has still not happened. The Tauranga City Council also voted to name part of the Te Maunga wetlands after Murray Read whose brainchild it is. That hasn't happened either.