Tauranga City Council has a new acting chief executive, Gareth Green.
Tauranga City Council has confirmed Gareth Green will serve as its acting chief executive, one week after Marty Grenfell (the previous CEO) announced his sudden resignation.
Gareth Green moved from New Plymouth to work in the Mayor’s office at Tauranga City Council earlier this year.
Marty Grenfell resigned after a report was released on “damning landslide failures” at the Mt Maunganui Campground.
A recruitment process for a new permanent CEO in Tauranga will start immediately and is to be in place by 20th October, a very quick turn around.
The announcement about Gareth Green is here:
https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/10/05/tauranga-city-council-names-acting-ceo-amid-landslide-failures/
This link is to a story around the resignation of the previous CEO Marty Grenfell. This article mentions skills they need with a new CEO:
““There is a lot of work to be done, and we will be looking for a (permanent) leader with the experience and expertise to help us drive significant change within the organisation as we appropriately respond to the Davison review and multiple other inquiries and investigations currently underway,” Drysdale said.
“My councillors and I will continue to demand of the interim CEO and senior leadership team that we see tangible, verifiable evidence of an overhaul of systems and processes through the organisational improvement programme currently in progress.”
The New Plymouth experience with Gareth Green’s tenure at the NPDC included 2 Deloitte’s audits, one in 2022 and a repeat in 2025, with both having the worst score Deloitte’s could give for how a council operates in New Zealand.
There was a restructure early in Gareth Green’s tenure, which did reduce staff numbers at that stage by around 40 people. By the end of the following year around 140 new positions had been created and filled at the NPDC. The restructure did not result in less staff, just a lot of new job titles, and one of the most unusual senior management structures that exists in New Zealand. Often people are not sure which senior management employee does what, as it is not clear who is responsible for what.
We also went through the Water Company set up situation where as the CEO, Gareth Green made an appointment of the sitting mayor, into an interim position the public knew nothing about. No conflicts of interest were deemed necessary to declare, by either Gareth Green or Neil Holdom, during this secret employment process.
We wrote direct to Gareth Green on 18th December 2025 about concerns with the handling of the Water Company Interim CEO position. We had some strong statements we made about the expected conduct of a government senior employee, as well as a number of questions the community wanted answers to.
8 minutes after sending these questions direct to Gareth Green, our letter was turned in to a LGOIMA request, with a 20 working day wait for a reply. It was decided Gareth would not answer the questions himself, they would be answered through an internal process.
Four days later, on 22nd December, Gareth Green resigned as the CEO of the NPDC and accepted a position in the Mayor’s office at Tauranga City Council.
It took months to get answers to those questions, but the answers led to the timeline we put together of who knew what, and when, with the recruitment of Neil Holdom by Gareth Green, to the Water CCO interim CEO position. A number of issues were identified with the entire process. For those who haven’t seen it, the timeline is here:
https://www.npratepayers.nz/blog/2246972
The New Zealand political environment has a habit of recycling the same candidates over and over again in to vacant positions - without too much background checking in to areas of concern from the past.
We hope the people, and Council, of Tauranga become aware of some of the areas of concern New Plymouth had during Gareth Green’s time at the NPDC.
Posted: 7 Oct 2026