Tauranga council chief executive Marty Grenfell resigns after landslide review

Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell has resigned, with his last day in the office this Friday, 2 October. Mayor Mahé Drysdale announced the departure after eight years in the job, weeks after an independent review found the January landslide at Mount Maunganui was preventable and that the council had failed to manage a risk it had been told about for two decades.

What happened

The review was led by retired High Court judge Paul Davison KC and released in August. It examined the 22 January landslide at the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park, which killed six people. The campground is on council-owned land.

Davison found that for more than two decades "one competent consultant after another" identified the landslide hazard to the campground. Warnings did not travel beyond siloed council teams and were not escalated to senior staff. They also did not appear to have been made accessible to local iwi, who jointly own Mauao. Responsibility for the risk seemed to fall across the administrative and legal boundary between the mountain and the campground. Successive restructures had also dispersed the people who held the institutional knowledge.

Davison said the failure was not that of any one person but of a system that let an identified risk to life remain "unowned, un-escalated and unmanaged". He made 10 systemic recommendations and five more aimed at emergency response officials.

Grenfell told councillors the council accepted the findings "without qualification". He had earlier said he had not offered to resign because he believed he was the best person to lead the council through a difficult period, and the mayor had backed him. The resignation followed an emergency closed-door meeting of councillors. Drysdale thanked Grenfell for his "unwavering commitment to public service" and wished him well. The council has not said whether the resignation is directly tied to the review.

Pressure from the community

Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell said in August there was a "huge question mark" over Grenfell's position and called the findings "unforgivable". After the resignation he said he was surprised Grenfell had not gone sooner and called the move "a positive step forward".

Michael O'Neill, president of the Mt Maunganui Ratepayers Association, said locals had wanted a change, and that Grenfell had lost the community's confidence. He pointed to other frustrations, including the Cameron Road infrastructure programme and the purchase of the marine precinct.

What ratepayers can expect next

The council will appoint an interim chief executive and start recruiting a permanent replacement soon. Drysdale said it wants a leader with the experience to drive "significant change" while responding to the Davison review and "multiple other inquiries and investigations currently underway". No timeline for the appointment has been announced.

Ratepayers are also paying for the fix. Councillors approved $500,000 of unbudgeted spending on 22 September to begin an 18-month Organisational Improvement Programme. The money covers an independent programme director, work to refine the plan, and immediate risk and culture initiatives. The programme has four workstreams: a risk framework giving leaders visibility of significant risks, emergency management, systems and tools so records are accessible, and culture and relationships.

Drysdale said other work may have to be dropped to make room, rather than simply bringing in more people. He said he and his councillors would keep demanding "tangible, verifiable evidence" of an overhaul from the interim chief executive and senior leadership team. Deputy Mayor Jen Scoular said the organisation should have started work on risk immediately after the tragedy.

Our take

A chief executive leaving does not fix a system. Davison was explicit that the failure sat in how the council recorded, owned and escalated risk, not in one person, and that is the part ratepayers should watch. The same structures that lost track of a known hazard for 20 years remain in place until the improvement programme changes them.

The council also deserves fair credit for accepting the findings in full and funding the response. But the mayor backed Grenfell weeks ago and the resignation came only after community pressure and a closed-door meeting. Ratepayers are entitled to a plain explanation of what changed in that time.

The test now is the interim appointment, the permanent hire and the evidence Drysdale has promised. Regular public reporting on progress against each of the four workstreams, including what gets dropped to pay for them, would show whether the council means what it says.