NZ In Tranzit: Anderton on controversy over advertising of City Manager position

Monday, June 27, 2011

Anderton on controversy over advertising of City Manager position

NZ in Tranzit -opinion, comment

I like this quote below, it appears in a very thoughtful and well written article in by senior Member of Parliament and, last year, unsuccessful Mayoral candidate, Jim Anderton.

"Something is amiss here, and I cannot help but draw the conclusion that this recruitment and appointment process should not continue. The fact that the Council is almost evenly split on such an important appointment is in itself cause for concern. This appointment is not something that has to be rushed, and it is imperative that Christchurch has a chief executive who can unite the city and inspire confidence in tackling the very important tasks which lie ahead," Jim Anderton said.

The article appears in Voxy online news titled
Anderton: Christchurch CEO Appointment Process Contaminated

Note I have no particular stance on this, nor about the current city manager, other than a general disquiet about areas I do follow with interest, public transport. I believe the city has long lacked coherent visionary leadership in implementing appropriate (in scale and cost) technologies and strategies to give Christchurch the vastly better public transport system it could have.

The biggest problem with public transport world wide is probably generic - those paid huge salaries to administrate or plan are not 24/7 public transport users, have little comprehension or competence in a field of engineering for which they have no genuine empathy and minimal ongoing depth experience. It is like people who never listen to music and who don't play an instrument believing they can write music that will speak to the hearts of listeners. A gross arrogance, a bumptiously patronising attitude, whose exposed incompetence continuously invites listener contempt. Where there are competent administrators, it seems to me, they tend to get over-ridden by politicians either out to blow their own trumpet with grand projects or are indifferent or atagonistic to public transport and keen to cut costs.

1 comment:

AnonymousJune 27, 2011 at 10:19 AM
The Community Board Chairs have written to the Councillors and Mayor asking for the process to be restarted too: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5195205/Stop-CEO-process-say-board-heads
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This blog is mostly about public transport and social infrastructure in Christchurch, and transit around New Zealand. Also tracked; transit developments in similar sized cities in Canada and Australia, kindred in demographic patterns, for added perspective and inspiration. NZ in Tranzit blog covers some of the new transit technology and discusses public transport concepts in general, as well. Because the blogster's day-job is in a high profile customer industry to preserve some degree of privacy he appears only as a rabbit in his profile, albeit using his real name.

Christchurch is a city of metropop c 400,000 in Te Wai Pounamu, the southern of the larger islands of NZ. Public transport is operated under the auspices of a regional council with bus operations (and those of one small cross harbour ferry) tendered out to private operators including one owned by the City Council, Redbus. We have a modern clean fleet of buses which offer fairly frequent services to all city areas. The city has been quick to adapt new technologies such as low-floor buses, smart-card (arguably the best in the world!), GPS and Real Time signage and interactive text, and online type information systems. Our busiest route is The Orbiter, a service that circulates around the middle suburbs, and the ring of shopping malls, high schools and the city University about 4-5km from the centre of town

Christchurch also has restored trams operating on a central city circuit. Note [May 2011] - Sadly, due to two huge earthquakes (that took 182 lives) and multiple aftershocks much of the central city of Christchurch will be closed to public access for up to a year to allow the demolition of 900 severely damaged buildings. This includes a great many heritage buildings that previously gave the central city its distinctive character and (such was the exceptional ferocity of the second earthquake in February) even some of the high rises, possibly including those shown in photo above. Tram operations are suspended for at least a year. Many other parts of the city have resumed active life for both residents and tourists..

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Monday, June 27, 2011

Anderton on controversy over advertising of City Manager position

1 comment:

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