Meet the chiefs who run our councils

Our five elected councils in Hawke’s Bay each directly employ only one officer, the chief executive. He or she then ‘rules the roost’, employing all other council staff, establishing the ‘corporate’ culture, and overseeing the strategic planning and day-to-day management of council business. 

James Palmer Hawke’s Bay Regional Council

James Palmer had a long career in Wellington, and for a number of years commuted between the bay and the capital. A Hawke’s Bay lad originally, he had been looking for a way to end his nomadic lifestyle – which over the years had seen him take thousands of flights – and ground himself here permanently.

Previously the group manager strategic development at the Regional Council, Palmer was also deputy secretary, sector strategy, at the Ministry for the Environment for three years, where he was responsible for the strategic direction of New Zealand’s environmental management system.

He’s been in the role of chief executive for the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council for five years, and has just started a two-year extension. 

Palmer says the machinery of central government is obviously much larger and more complex, and more formal in structure than local government, and everybody knows what their role is.

Local government has some similarities – councillors are like a legislature, they get to vote on things, but also they can be the opposition and have disagreements. And, it’s more transparent, doing their business in the public eye instead of behind cabinet doors.

Palmer says one of the main differences is that regional councils have a much bigger range of functions compared to highly specialised ministries, and chief executives are more proximal to their communities and elected members.

“In central government you are more removed. It’s more theoretical. In local government it’s more practical and things happen more in real time and you can make a difference more easily.”

Palmer says many of the problems now facing local government stem from decades of inaction on critical infrastructure investment and environmental mismanagement, largely stemming from the discretion afforded them by devolved power. The national directives now coming at regional councils hard and fast are in part a response to that inaction. Chickens are coming home to roost, he says.

“That has rapidly layered up in recent years, increasing what we are required to do and on particular timeframes and they have got really significant resourcing and budgetary implications.

“So, one of the reasons that local government has grown in rates expenditure and activity, particularly for regional councils, has been that growing amount of national direction, which takes away some of your discretion and is forcing us to do more on particular issues. We see that continuing to grow.”

This creates tensions in a couple of areas, he says. Rate hikes are putting pressure on the asset rich and cash poor, as well as the asset poor and cash poor – which, let’s face it, is most of us.

“The upward pressure on rates is a challenge for our community and the ongoing financial sustainability of local government is something that we are currently looking at and is a cause for concern for local government generally. So we do have our hand out to central government fairly regularly in terms of funding support.”

The other tension is the skills shortage. Much of the work councils are now required to do – for example, fresh water reforms require water quality and quantity limits on every water body in the region – also require huge numbers of highly specialised science, engineering and IT roles to be filled; STEM subjects that traditionally the country has not produced many of, he notes.

“We really struggle to find hydrological modellers or [people in] specialised areas of science. All the regional councils are looking for the same types of people.”

HBRC employs 335 staff and staff turnover hit 20% in the last year, the highest the regional council has ever had, and Palmer says the Great Resignation has certainly visited Hawke’s Bay. There has been an exodus of council staff to roles in central government, particularly. But the reverse is also true and the council is benefiting from workers looking for something new. 

I asked him what it was like leading the organisation during the pandemic, and how controversial vaccine mandates had affected office life. 

“What I would say is that of the five years I’ve been chief executive the last two have been the hardest, and the last year the hardest of the two. Turnover has been very high, staff morale has been very challenging. 

“I think everybody has struggled in their own lives with everything that has occurred … that has made it really challenging being the chief people officer, which as the chief executive you really are, in maintaining the optimism and positivity and momentum.” 

On the positive side, Palmer has led the organisation in an era in which there is much greater engagement with mana whenua and iwi, and he says it’s things like this, along with good progress in environmental management and restoration, which excite him most about his role. 

Engagement with Māori has never been higher, a point that is not widely understood by the public, and nor is the importance of it well understood, he says. It is a statutory requirement for councils, and new national directives also require it – for example the Te Mana o Te Wai policies. But it’s also the right thing to do. 

“Between our treaty entities and Ngāti Kahungunu’s marae based tai whenua network, we are working more closely in partnership than ever before.” 

Palmer tells me how after the earthquake in 1931, the harbour board, a predecessor to the regional council, confiscated land from Ngāti Paarau at Waiohiki, to build a stop bank along the Tūtaekurī river. 

“At the time they had a thriving dairy farm. They were a prosperous Māori community there, very much in control of their destiny and their land was taken from them without compensation. And they were physically excluded from accessing the river which for hundreds of years had been their source of mana, where all of their life rituals had occurred and their mahinga kai was sourced from. 

“The Tūtaekurī was redirected down to Waitangi having been previously naturally let out through Greenmeadows to the estuary. 

“And so it’s wonderful to have a member of Ngāti Paarau, Hinewai Ormsby, as our highest polling candidate at the last local body elections and now chair of our local environment committee.” 

Ngāti Paarau are also represented at the regional council’s co-governance table for regional planning and are involved in plans for the Ahuriri regional park, which will restore the natural environment. 

“These partnerships are about healing, healing our history and landscapes. What I am really proud of and excited by is how we as an institution are facing our past, confronting that and are now working to restore our environment.” 

Nigel Bickle
Hastings District Council

A boy from Porirua, who spent 30 years working in central government roles says it was the pull of family that first made him consider looking for work in Hawke’s Bay.

With a long list of senior leadership titles including deputy chief executive of Immigration, chief executive of the Department of Building and Housing and a decade in what is today the Ministry for Social Development, Nigel Bickle had not envisioned himself in a local government role.

Yet, less than a year into his role heading up the Provincial Growth Fund for Shane Jones, Bickle resigned and took the reigns as chief executive at Hastings District Council.

His youngest son had won an academy contract with Hawke’s Bay Rugby in 2017; then his daughter fell in love with one of her brother’s rugby mates. All of a sudden two of his four kids were living in the Bay, and Bickle was regularly travelling up to watch his son’s matches.

As deputy chief executive of Immigration for ten years, he had travelled here frequently with respect to the Recognised Seasonal Employers scheme – a vital labour support line for the region’s growers, and he knew Ngahiwi Tomoana well from being delegates together on official trips abroad. 

“I always loved coming to Hawke’s Bay, never thought about living here. And then I saw the job advertised and I thought, you know, that actually looks really interesting. So I did a bit of due diligence on the mayor and council and what they were trying to do and thought it would be really interesting and sort of popped my hat in the ring. The rest is history.”

He took up the role in February 2019, and despite knowing he would face delivery challenges like the post-Havelock North drinking water improvements and Hasting’s CBD revitalisation projects, he says he “absolutely loves it”.

“It’s a great place to live and in Hastings there is a renaissance going on, built on a thriving primary sector and a really progressive mayor and council which has got a big vision for Hastings.”

As a chief executive in public service, Bickle says he’s always been motivated by making an impact, rather than big titles. Local government is quite a departure from what he was used to, however. The signals and feedback are more immediate. 

He knew his work for immigration was having an impact in terms of the country’s social, economic, international relations and humanitarian goals, but it was much harder to determine what the results were, he says.

“The first month I was here, the first council meeting was pretty contentious, because it was about whether we kept Cape Kidnappers closed or reopened it. And I remember picking up Hawke’s Bay Today and thinking, ‘who’s leaked the cabinet papers?’. And then thinking that’s right, we do it completely the other way around here.”

Early on, Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst asked him to come up with a plan to address the housing crisis. She was tired of waiting on central government. Using his Wellington connections, and in collaboration with Ngahiwi Tomoana who was hosting the prime minister at Waipatu Marae, a presentation was given and an offer to come up with a credible plan was made and accepted, right there.

“We did that work and the government ended up choosing Hastings for its pilot for its place based housing approach at the end of 2019, and made commitments to build 100s of social homes. $10 million for Papa Kainga, housing through our iwi partners, a million dollars for the healthy homes initiative. We’ve been at it for three years now and we’ve subsequently got more investment because we’re actually delivering.”

I asked him about the centralising forces gripping local government at the moment – three waters reform, RMA reform, national policy statements on urban development and housing – and if that was creating tensions for the council.

“They are trying to transform everything at the same time, and what that feels like at the community level for the council, for our iwi and mana whenua partners, is a little bit overwhelming … Sometimes I worry about how this stuff is actually going to play out in practice in communities.”

The district’s population has grown by 7% in the last three years and there are unprecedented levels of growth in residential, industrial and commercial construction, putting big pressure on land supply, he says.

Bickle and his colleagues are nailing down how the district will grow over the next 30 years, in its future development strategy. The two big issues impacting the strategy are the changing roles and responsibilities from the RMA reform and the creation of the new mega water entities under Taumata Arowai. 

Hastings is mostly on board with the regulatory overhaul of water, especially given the 2016 events in Havelock North kicked it all off, but is less sure about the scale of the new water entities, he says.

“We are concerned about representation and accountability back to our communities.”

Bickle’s leadership style is largely about enabling others, so he can focus on the big picture stuff looking five, 10 and 20 years out. He wasn’t recruited to fix problems in the council, as nothing was broken, he says.

“What I think I bring is the ability to partner and create alliances on the big things that can’t be done directly through council.”

Nor is he obsessed with detail, preferring to trust his team to do their jobs. He notes a series of basketball courts being rollout out across Flaxmere was largely undertaken without oversight from senior leadership.

“How cool is that, that somebody in our organisation felt enabled enough to go and cut a deal with Basketball NZ, Sports NZ, Sports Hawke’s Bay, to be the pilot to roll this out.”

HDC employs 460 staff; staff turnover is running at 13 per cent, compared to the sector average of 18 per cent, he says. 

“I think that speaks to the effort we put into being an organisation that is a really good place to work and where you can ultimately make a difference.”

He’ll be 53 this year and says he has a lot of scar tissue, which has probably changed the way he does things.

“I’m a highly visible leader. I don’t have a desktop, I don’t have a laptop, I don’t have an office. I live my life on my phone. And I’m all about relationships and partnerships and a purposeful way of getting things done.” 

Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air