Huon Valley Guessing Games Surprise, surprise: Huon Valley Council (HVC) has, once again, decided that a valley applicant for its general manager’s position was the best of a big, and otherwise outside-of-the-valley, field of candidates.
This time, council has appointed “its first female general manager”. Well, what’s so special about that? HVC in its two-score years of existence has had only two previous GMs — Geoff Cockerill and Glenn Doyle — so one-in-three (favouring the male gender) sounds unremarkable enough to me. Surely there’s not a hint of misogyny in the wording of council’s media release?
It’s to be hoped Simone Watson will get a better “shake of the sauce bottle” at HVC than what Kevin Rudd and, more especially, Tony Abbott gave PM Julia Gillard, a woman with more guts and grey matter than Rudd and Abbott combined.
When Doyle was appointed in 2009, he was judged best of a field of near 30. This time, acting general manager Simone Watson has prevailed over a field of “more than 40 applicants” that may just have included one other in-house applicant, Matthew Grimsey, whose job with council, since August, has been described as “executive manager regulatory & development services”.
The appointment means that, either the Huon Valley is inordinately blessed with top-level local government bureaucratic talent, or the determination to keep the affairs of council strictly within the Huonville chambers is still far too strong for any outsider to have been given serious consideration. Many council observers believe the only way the job could have gone to an outsider would have been if no one in the valley had applied for it.
Watson, who has kept council idling over fairly smoothly since Doyle stood down in October 2012, will now take substantive control of a council desperately in need of firm and constructive leadership ( see http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/would-someone-please-pick-up-the-pieces/ ).
The workload carried by council’s always pleasant-to-deal-with staff must now be huge. There has been staff seepage in the past year and not all the holes have been filled. Some positions seem to have been abandoned.
Just a sampling of the loads carried by HVC managers can be gleaned by listing those that burden Watson herself and Grimsey. According to council’s August 2013 list of officers, Watson is responsible for “executive support and policy — councillor support, communication and information; media and communications; strategic planning; intergovernmental relations; reforms; grant procurement and competitive services; emergency support; public safety; sport and recreation”. And, of course, she has to keep the council machine as a whole running smoothly.
Grimsey’s responsibilities are “statutory and strategic land-use planning; building and development-assessment services; environmental health; municipal inspection; compliance; legal & governance services; natural-resource management; waste management; economic development (tourism, arts and heritage)”.
Phew! Hope they’re getting paid overtime.
Watson, in council’s September 5 press release, is quoted as saying: “Together we will make transparent and accountable decisions that provide benefit to the community.” Well, that would be a nice change — but they always say that, don’t they?
She went on to say: “We will also work with our major stakeholders — community groups, businesses and other levels of government — to ensure we are always working in the interests of our community.” The idea of stakeholders being “other levels of government” is a bit strange. Too much footsy with government is no guarantee that the “interests of our community” will be enhanced.
Now that the predictable has happened, one can only hope that Watson has the fortitude and determination to try to do what her predecessor, Glenn Doyle, said he would be trying to do when he stepped into the job in 2009. “I’m determined to change the culture of the council,” said Doyle. He did make some progress, but all that seems to have ebbed away since his passing.
All the signs are that the Huon Valley is in for more of the same lacklustre performance that has characterised it over the past decade. As acting GM, it would have been difficult for Watson to have asserted her authority. But now, as a representative of a generation much younger than those of her predecessors, she has the chance to impose her own brand on council and help it make a constructive contribution to laying the foundations for a viable and sustainable economic and environmental future for our beautiful valley. I’m sure everyone in the municipality wishes her well. — Bob Hawkins
