Napier Mayor McGrath has fired his Deputy Mayor, Sally Crown.
He took this action today after asking Councillor Crown to resign yesterday, an action she refused to take.
Here is Mayor McGrath’s statement in its entirety:
After careful consideration of the leadership requirements of Council at this time, I have decided to stand Councillor Crown down from her role as Deputy Mayor.
I was elected with a clear agenda for change and I remain firmly committed to delivering on it for Napier. My priority is to protect the reputation and integrity of Napier City Council and I’m committed to ensuring we continue to work constructively as a team so this does not impact the delivery of the services our community relies on. There is no time for distraction or a lack of alignment. The community voted for change in leadership and they expect delivery. Our focus must remain firmly on rates discipline, critical infrastructure, and delivering on our commitments.
While I had hoped this matter could be resolved amicably, today’s events have shown that Councillor Crown has chosen not to take that approach.
This decision follows a breakdown in the level of trust and loyalty I require in the Deputy Mayor role. I have observed conduct and actions that in my view have not met the standard of collective leadership expected of that position. As Mayor it is my responsibility to ensure the leadership team operates with respect and integrity.
I will make an announcement on the appointment of a new Deputy Mayor in the coming days.
Councillor Sally Crown statement
At a NCC Council meeting earlier today, Councillor Crown gave this statement, also presented here in its entirety, disclosing an ultimatum the Mayor delivered to her at a Monday meeting:
Today I am tabling a piece of correspondence with councillors and commenting for the record on what I believe is gross miscarriage of due and fair process.
The document I am circulating to you now (if I can ask governance to take these and distribute please) was described to me as a script [Editor: this dcument is attached below] and initially read verbally during my weekly catch-up with Mayor Richard. Traditionally we meet for lunch so as to accommodate his schedule, however yesterday’s meeting was moved to a 2pm time-slot and his office. It was here that he read from the script, you’ll see he formally requests I resign from the deputy mayor role, stating that if I did not, he would remove me from the role some 3 hours later. He refused to discuss this with me and shut the meeting down within 5m of me walking in. I was absolutely blind-sided. You’ll see the reasons given are punctuated by two bullet points and a paragraph that summarised claims of a relationship breakdown. I want you all to know this is the first time any concerns had been raised with me regarding trust, confidence, my behaviour or performance in the role.
My interpretation of the next part of the script, where Mayor Richard confirms that I would retain all other senior roles and appointments. is that it is an acknowledgement of my professional leadership, capability, work ethic and commitment to being an effective elected member.
There are two key reasons besides transparency that I am motivated to bring this to the table today.
Firstly, challenging one another and holding each other to account is a key part of the role of being an elected member. A healthy governance culture invites diversity of thought and open conversation. The signals being sent by the abrupt nature of the mayor’s actions are that this is about control and coercion. Demonstrating there is an unfettered power attached to their role and invoking it with no consultation with the key affected party is akin to expecting blind allegiance.
We are living in a time when the ramifications of blind allegiance to leaderships is causing unrest and upheaval for individuals, families and political systems across the world. It is certainly not healthy governance practice and falls below the standard I believe our team aspire to operate at and the measure by which we uphold ourselves to ratepayers and residents.
Secondly, the responsibility to consider natural justice. Natural justice is the fundamental principle of procedural fairness. This is about the process rather than the outcome. As mentioned, yesterday at 2pm was the first time that any concern as to the working relationship had been raised either verbally or in writing. An initial three-hour deadline to agree to resign was later changed to today at 5pm, in recognition of natural justice and being a fairer and more reasonable response. In order to protect future elected members, the organisation and rate-payers, it would be remiss of me not to seek a judicial review on the decision making process, triggered by the mayor’s actions. Unfortunately, this will incur cost and use of resources to the council. I have requested further clarification of what this could be.
I am a firm believer that titles do not determine the effectiveness of the person who holds them. In fact the substance of effectiveness in this role is provided by the mandate of the people who chose us to sit around this table, the relationships and collaborative nature of working with dedicated and skilled staff, the trust placed in us daily by residents and local organisations that reach out to us to support, advocate and assist them in navigating council processes and of course the culture of our governance team. The ability to respectfully agree to disagree, to interrogate information and challenge each other openly in good faith is critical to good governance. Every elected member here has the right to maintain their integrity to comment on how they think about any issue.
I want to take this opportunity to reassure our community that regardless of the leadership example being set for us by the mayor at this time. I will not be coerced or bullied into staying silent, and will continue to act with courage, challenge where appropriate and look for opportunities for us all to work constructively to raise the level of governance quality within our council.
The motion I am bringing to my colleagues today is in response to the emerging pattern of negatively charged communications triggered by seemingly ad hoc, chaotic, reckless decisions of our Mayor. These present significant reputational and effectiveness risks to our organisation and I consider we need to act with haste if we want to support him to be successful. I also acknowledge that sometimes experience in certain areas is limited and it is therefore imperative that plugging vital knowledge gaps needs to take place early in the tenure of any elected member.
I move that we:
Direct staff to bring a paper with a communications training and leadership development plan for the mayoral role, that this be funded from the allocated professional development budget .
At the Council meeting, some Councillors suggested their input be considered before any further action was taken, considering the likely reputational damage to NCC. However Mayor McGrath issued his statement at 3pm officially standing down the Deputy Mayor, which is his prerogative under NCC rules.
Also following NCC rules, Council staff indicated that Councillor Crown’s motion would be appropriately vetted and brought back before Councillors thereafter.
Stay tuned to learn who the next Napier Deputy Mayor will be and what their pre-nuptial agreement looks like.
A further lesson here — each Napier Councillors will now need to take his/her job really seriously … leadership will be required from one and all.
Ironically, earlier in the NCC meeting, Napier Councillors unanimously approved the Triennial Agreement, as each of the other HB councils will, in which all the councils pledge to play nice together.
Apparently the spirit of that wasn’t infectious!
