The Daily News had a lot to say about Mayor Max on the Front Page on Saturday 22nd May. These are our thoughts on story One.

The Daily News had a lot to say about Mayor Max on the Front Page on Saturday 22nd May. These are our thoughts on story One.

Was it a back room deal to appoint an interim CEO for the NPDC this year ?

Gareth Green had resigned, and many in the community were happy to see him move to Tauranga.

Major reforms are happening from Central Government – Councils in all regions across NZ are merging. Regional Councils will not exist at the next election – people won’t be voting for people to represent them through a Regional Council in 2028.

In this mix the NPDC needed a new CEO. The Chairman of the TRC and the Mayor of New Plymouth came up with a plan that a very experienced CEO at the TRC, who is retiring in the next 9 to 12 months – may be able to handle the restructure of the 2 organisations – and part of the CEO function at the NPDC.

And let’s not forget – The Mayor has just one employee – the CEO. So the Mayor – any Mayor – should have a big say in who they employ in this role which reports directly to them.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that the NPDC had decided on an interim part time CEO Role.

• Did everyone think it was a great idea ? – whether that was the public or the elected officials. No.
• Did people bring up multiple reasons why this wasn’t a perfect solution ? Yes.
• We wrote a story asking a number of questions about how this was meant to work.

But as quoted by Mayor Max in this story “This was not a normal situation and a collaborative approach was taken – to get in front of what was known at the time regarding local government reforms”.

In this Daily News story on 22^nd May, Dinnie Moeahu states “the documents (Daily News OIA response) revealing the secret negotiations had come as a “massive surprise” to him and clearly showed “colluding going on behind the scenes” and “behind the backs of councillors”.

The Daily News OIA results show 3 Councillors had concerns about the interim CEO process. This was Dinnie Moeahu, Te Waka McLeod and David Bublitz. The OIA result shows they raised these concerns with their fellow councillors prior to the meeting to make the decision about the Interim CEO position.

This proposal was discussed in a closed to the public meeting and both the TRC elected officials and the NPDC elected officials voted on this proposal.

25 elected officials, across 2 councils, voted on this proposal.

This story in the Daily News shows you 3 people weren’t happy with the process in the days before the meeting where the vote was taken.

Does that mean 22 others accepted what was being proposed, and voted to implement it ?

Quoted by Mayor Max, “All the elected officials were privy to the entire outline of what was being proposed and chose to accept it or not”.

The majority accepted it, and Steve Ruru was appointed.