The new WCC CEO

Katie Chapman at Dom Post reports:

An Englishman with a reputation for cost-cutting has been picked as chief executive of City Council, ousting long-term incumbent Garry Poole.

In a closed-door meeting on night, councillors spent three hours debating the appointment of , who will receive a salary of $420,000. Councillors interviewed four people for the position on Monday, after deciding in August to advertise the position.

Mr Poole applied for the job but The understand he lost out in a 9-6 vote to Dr Lavery, chief executive of Cornwall Council in southwest England.

In that role, which he has held for four years, Dr Lavery has been responsible for a £1 billion (NZ$1.94b) budget, and has driven a controversial proposal to outsource shared council services, including information technology, call centres and procurement in an effort to cut costs. In 2010, his pay package was worth £245,342 (NZ$476,732), and a newspaper investigation found that Cornwall Council had the highest staff credit card bill in Britain.

A reputation for cost cutting sounds good to me as a ratepayer.

Mr Poole announced the decision in a statement to staff yesterday: “As you can appreciate, it is a decision that for me is a significant disappointment. I am enormously proud of Wellington and what we have done to help it build an international reputation as a remarkable place to live, work, visit and play.”

I thought Poole had been an effective CEO. It seems one of those situations where Council would have been happy to keep him on, but thought someone else was a stronger candidate. is one of the benefits of fixed term contracts.

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