Strangeness continues in Gore

I blogged previously on the weird attempt by the former Mayor’s comms person to “out” the new Mayor, 23 year old Ben Bell.

Since then we have had a total breakdown in the relationship between the Mayor and the CE that they will no longer meet with each other, and also had a Councillor resign.

I am not close enough to Gore to know what are the drivers here, in terms of who is to blame. I guess there are three scenarios.

1. The new Mayor is enthusiastic but inexperienced and won’t take advice and simply can’t manage relationships sucessfully
2. The old guard can’t accept a 23 year old newbie to the area beat out the long-standing Mayor, and are doing everything they can to frustrate him
3. A mixture of (1) and (2)

I was leaning more towards (1) than (2) but then I saw this article by Radio NZ:

One of the men at the centre of the stand-off at Gore District Council was given a two-year contract extension just two days before the new council was elected.

Chief executive Stephen Parry is no longer on speaking terms with new mayor Ben Bell and both are now in place until 2025, when the next elections will be held.

During a behind-closed-doors session of an extraordinary meeting of the council on 6 October, the previous term’s councillors granted the maximum two-year extension to Parry’s contract.

Multiple sources told RNZ his contract as chief executive was due to expire in September this year.

I regard that decision as being done in very poor faith. No elected body should be appointing a CE two days before an election. There might be mitigating circumstances if the contract was due to expire within a couple of months, but in fact there was still 11 months to go. It is hard to not conclude this was done because of the possibility of a change of Mayor.

Hicks today defended the decision to extend Parry’s contract.

“As someone that’s been around local government for a long time, I’m aware of the complexities that are coming at councils headlong at the moment and having some stability there, in my view, is very important,” Hicks said.

This was not a decision for Hicks, when he was just hours out from an election. It sounds like he was deliberately trying to tie the hands of the next Mayor and Council.

Parry had been the council’s chief executive since 2001.

This is the part that rang even larger warning bells. Basically you have had the same Mayor and CE for almost 20 years, and the question has to be asked if the CE refusing to work with the new Mayor, because he had the temerity to beat the old Mayor, and he knows there is nothing the new Mayor can do because he had his contract extended?

As a matter of principle, I don’t think an organisation should keep the same CE for 20 years. It is healthy to have change.

Now again I don’t have any inside knowledge here, but the reappointment two days before the election reeks of bad faith.