Huon Valley Guessing Games
The media release announcing the resignation of Glenn Doyle as general manager of Huon Valley Council last Thursday (March 28) leaves questions unanswered.
Oddly, the release started with Mayor Robert Armstrong announcing that the council’s “former” general manager “had resigned”. Was this simply slack wording, or had Doyle resigned some time before the date of the release? (Whichever, “former” officers don’t have to resign: they only resign or get sacked when they still hold the job.)
By late yesterday (March 31), I could still not find on council’s website the March 28 media release.
Nor could I find anything about the status of Community Services Manager Marcia Waller, the person who, around September/October last year, lodged the complaint of “bullying and harassment” against Doyle.
Doyle and Waller have been on leave with full pay since then (see http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/what-gives-mr-mayor/).
In the ,i>Mercury on Good Friday (March 29), Zara Dawtrey reported that Armstrong had said the independent investigation had been conducted by a Hobart law firm. Thursday’s release — which said Doyle had “voluntarily stood aside last year to allow an independent investigation into allegations by a staff member of bullying and harassment” — made no mention that a law firm had been employed to conduct the investigation.
Armstrong, in the media release, said “the resignation followed a difficult and stressful period for Mr Doyle and for council”; that Doyle had been “cleared of the allegations but the investigation was a lengthy and comprehensive, but necessary, process”; and that council had “acted with utmost propriety in relation to Mr Doyle”.
The release said that Doyle “welcomed the findings . . . but in the circumstances he had decided to resign to explore other opportunities”.
Aspects of the issue that the media release did not touch on are worth pondering. Examples: Is this the end of the matter? What is Waller’s position? How will council go about appointing a new general manager? And, most intriguingly, is there substance in talk from the western side of the Huon — especially from Franklin (which always seems to know almost everything about council goings on before anyone else) — that an inquiry into the Doyle-Waller issue is also being conducted by Workplace Standards?
These are questions council should answer if it is to demonstrate its commitment to frank and open communication with the public.
It seems odd that a public institution — which is what local government is — felt that it needed to privatise the judicial process by hiring a law firm to decide the outcome of such a serious issue. This choice of action is perplexing.
Mayor Armstrong said in Thursday’s media release that Glenn Doyle had made a “significant contribution during his term as general manager”. There’s no doubt about that: Huon Valley Council is a far better organisation than the one Doyle took charge of in 2009.
His tenure, about three years (having stood aside from his duties last October), wrought many changes to a body that at the time of his appointment was still failing to explain (as it still is) why it had (as an independent council election candidate asserted in 2011) “gambled away” $4 million of electors’ money on risky exotic investments. (The first news of those losses came to light late in 2008, well before Doyle’s appointment as GM.)
From the time Doyle took over, stories of his Ruddist approach to work were legion. He drove himself and staff hard, and, in the space of a year, he transformed council from secretive dysfunctionality to a smooth-running, though still secretive, machine.
A torrent of detailed reports and other documents — some that he instigated, others that had been wallowing unfinished or not even started by the previous management — flowed across the council table, each being given virtually rubber-stamp approval.
Among that torrent of paperwork: a “consultation and communications strategy” (the spirit of which Armstrong’s controlling group seems to take scant notice); a “2010-2015 strategic plan”; a “10-year new-asset program”; a “long-term financial plan” (to 2021); an “asset management strategy”; a “Huonville/Ranelagh strategic plan”; a township plan for Cygnet in 2010 (for which controlling councillors seem to have little respect); and an “arts and heritage strategy and action plan”, launched since the Doyle-Waller issue arose.
His restructuring of council and its operations was impressive, a performance matched perhaps by Doyle’s achievement in bringing a bit of dignity to the council chamber. Today — obviously largely due to Doyle’s influence — an air of decorum prevails that was rarely to be seen before he became GM.
There’s still a bit of sniping in the chamber, but when debate does occur — which is rarely — it is conducted in an atmosphere of seeming mutual respect.
At “public question time”, the mayor nowadays treats electors with increased respect; and, when he harasses nervous electors who are long-winded in getting to their questions, his stock “What is the question?” is usually delivered in a more encouraging tone.
And, on the odd occasion, members of the Armstrong group have even been seen to accept the wisdom of the views of the two female Greens councillors, each with a PhD. In total, thanks I’m sure to Glenn Doyle, the atmosphere in the chamber has become much more congenial.
On September 12, 2011, in Tasmanian Times (http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/huon-valley-guessing-games-a-council-culture-in-ferment/), I wrote: “Doyle . . . [when] new in the job as Huon Valley Council general manager, said he was determined to change the culture of the council. Now, two years on, it is clear that he has (i) welded together a staff team that is prepared to work their butts off coping with myriad and varied chores; and (ii), despite the dead hand of the controlling Futures Group [the mayor’s men], he has taken grip of a dysfunctional council and led it a good way along the tortuous path to long-overdue cultural change.”
Now, more than 18 months further on, Doyle has left a council that, most certainly, has had its culture changed for the better in many ways.
Since Doyle stood aside, Manager Infrastructure Services Simone Watson has made a good fist of it as acting GM. She will continue to work with her apparently always willing staff to keep council ticking over while it decides on a new GM. In Thursday’s media release, Armstrong said council would “soon move to appoint a new general manager” and that “Watson would continue in [charge] until the position was filled”.
Will Watson offer her services when the top job is advertised? Her performance since Doyle’s departure from active service last October indicates she’s got the grit and drive to tackle the job. But does she want it?
It may have been a slip of the tongue, but a couple of years back when council was debating accepting electronic lodgment of documents for planning and development applications — and Mayor Armstrong clearly was not keen on the idea — Doyle said he regarded it as important that council should get itself into the “20th century”!
Perhaps — now that council is running more efficiently and showing signs of acknowledging that it is, in fact, the 21st century and that change is unavoidable — the list of applicants to become the Huon’s top bureaucrat will result in a more varied and talented line-up than was available for selection in 2009. Council may even find it is in the municipality’s best interests to appoint a non-native of the valley. — Bob Hawkins
• September 2011: Huon Valley Guessing Games: A council culture in ferment
