Leading quietly from the background
Michael Ross leaves behind nearly three decades in local government when he retires at the end of the month. The outgoing chief executive of the Waitaki District Council sat down with North Otago reporter Hamish MacLean this week.
DESPITE his assertion a council chief executive is ‘‘just orchestrating quietly in the background’’, since 2004 Michael Ross has been behind some of the biggest decisions that have shaped North Otago.
Bringing reliable water to the district and facilitating the tourism boom — projects that are ‘‘basically powering our whole economy’’ — were underpinned by the outgoing Waitaki District Council chief executive.
Nevertheless Mr Ross, as he sees it, is ‘‘just the guy at the back’’.
‘‘You know how you tend to view a hierarchy of an organisation, an organisational chart, and the typical way to view it is like a pyramid and the chief executive is at the top? I’ve always had the view that you should turn it around the other way and put it upside down,’’ Mr Ross (66) said. ‘‘And the people that are actually out there doing it day to day with our ratepayers are the people who are interfacing with the community on a regular basis.
‘‘We’re just there quietly working in the background to provide our key staff who are interfacing with ratepayers with the tools they need to deliver good and services — whether that be libraries, or aquatic centres, or whatever.
‘‘Also for the politicians — our job is to make the politicians look as good as they possibly can in front of their communities: to support them to do that, to deliver the decisions they make, and just keep them informed and keep them doing it.’’
Under Mr Ross’s leadership the council played a part in Project Aqua; the Oamaru Water Treatment Plan; the Oamaru Opera House refurbishment; the North Otago Irrigation
Company; the Friendly Bay and Oamaru Harbour redevelopment; the Otematata Lake Centre Development; the Observatory Retirement Village; the earthquake prone buildings collaboration and submission; the Waitaki Catchment Water Allocation Regional Plan; and the Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail, among other projects.
‘‘There are some of those things where I would have been in a position to make missioncritical decisions when they were needed to be made and one of the things that I have never shied away from is making decisions,’’ Mr Ross said. ‘‘I make decisions quite quickly and I don’t muck around.
‘‘There are always times when things are delicately balanced and if you make the wrong decision it might go backwards or stop, but if you keep pushing on, you get there. Sometimes, you have to go out on a bit of a limb and trust your own judgement — Alps 2 Ocean was like that at times when we didn’t have the support of everybody, but we kept pushing on.’’
Mr Ross entered local government in 1989 after a career as an accountant and sharebroker.
He spent six years at the Queenstown Lakes District Council after becoming corporate services manager, then five years at Clutha District Council as chief executive, and three and ahalf at Southland District Council as chief executive.
In his time in Waitaki, the district he grew up in, he worked with three mayors: Alan McLay (200407); Alex Familton (200713); and Gary Kircher (from 2013).
His private sector background gave him confidence ‘‘to back my decisions’’ and provided he kept the politicians informed ‘‘and that we were all on the same page — then just move ahead’’.
‘‘I never looked at the Local Government Act,’’ he said. ‘‘I mean, most of the time, if it’s sensible and if your council supports it, you just get on with it. My managers know that I don’t worry about the legislation, because I think it could otherwise hinder a good idea. But they keep an eye on me to make sure I’m not stepping too far outside of the legislation.’’
He listed the failure to get the Forrester Heights subdivision off the ground as his biggest regret: a project tripped up by a historic clerical error.
In 2013, the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other
Land Empowering Act clarified the status of Forrester Heights as endowment land, overturning the clerical mistake from 1937 that classified the area as reserve land, but after first being proposed as a subdivision in
2006, it never got under way.
‘‘It will go ahead,’’ Mr Ross said this week. The council might decide to sell the land and ‘‘give a developer the opportunity to do it’’.
Mr Ross was involved in successful subdivisions at Queenstown Lakes District Council and Southland District Council and he firmly believed it could be an opportunity for Waitaki.
‘‘It was an accepted part of council activity to be actively involved in subdivision development, in those councils,’’ Mr Ross said. ‘‘It’s not something that council shouldn’t do, especially if it’s gifted land for the benefit of ratepayers. A lot of people say we shouldn’t compete with other developers. Well, sorry, we’re actually here to make money, to reduce debt, or, for the benefit of the wider community.’’
Next on his todo list, however, was retirement in Wanaka with his wife Susie. The couple would retire to land his parents bought in Wanaka in 1967, to a house where Mr Ross and his father poured the foundations with an ‘‘oldfashioned concrete mixer’’ and a wheelbarrow.
He had a season’s pass for Cardrona, a golf handicap he was keen to lower, a group of people he went mountain biking with, and he was a member of the local curling club, he said.
‘‘I think I’m going to be quite busy. I want to get really fit and have a really good quality of life in terms of the next 10 years of my life and still being reasonably active.’’
When the Otago Daily Times asked if he would miss the role he had held over the past 13 years, his reply came quickly.
‘‘Oh, for five minutes, probably,’’ he said.
‘‘I was very privileged to have this opportunity.’’