Council staff top performers

Top honours

The East Coast branch of the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand, featuring a predominance of Hastings District Council building officers, has won the industry’s “pinnacle award”.

Of the 26 branch members 13 are on Hastings council staff, with the balance coming from councils over the rest of the East Coast and private practice consultants.

BOINZ is a professional organisation aimed at raising the status and advancing the interests of the Building Control Surveying profession.

Their citation for the Branch of the Year Award said having one of the smallest memberships across New Zealand proved “no barrier” for a team which had built strong relationships with industry.

“They spice things up through a combination of insightful and relevant presentations [and] site visits . . . [and] distance presents no barriers. Members drive hundreds of kilometres to attend their meetings, and then they go back again.”

BOINZ is a professional organisation aimed at raising the status and advancing the interests of the Building Control Surveying profession.

Chairman and Hastings council senior building officer Michael Skelton said taking the “Branch of the Year” title was a real coup. “This is a very prestigious accolade bearing in mind the sheer size of Auckland Branch (somewhere around 200 members) and Canterbury Westland with the recovery and rebuild of Christchurch.”

Silver spot

The Imagineers, a team of top performing Hastings District Council staff, pulled off a second in this year’s LGMA Management Challenge.

The team: Dominic Salmon, Karen Sue, Kevin Dresser, Megan Gaffaney, Regan Smith and Sharon O’Toole, with mentor Hastings Corporate and Customer Services group manager Mike Maguire, made the final nine New Zealand teams to take on the challenge.

Hastings was pipped at the post by Tauranga City Council which will go on to compete in the Australasian final.

Hastings had an excellent record in the challenge, finishing second or first in three of the last four challenge competitions. Hastings was first in New Zealand in 2012 and then went on to win the Australasian Final. .

The 20-year-old competition aimed to equip council staff with innovative leadership and management skills through hands-on tasks involving brain-storming, role play and interaction with other council teams. Many participants in challenge teams go on to very senior roles in local government organisations.

Keeping Hastings Beautiful

Another staff member to gain recognition on the national stage is council environment enhancement officer Wendy Beeke.

She features in the April edition of the Keep New Zealand Beautiful newsletter, praised for getting out into the community to educate and encourage people to get involved by promoting the Keep Hastings Beautiful message at public events.

Wendy says the aim is to engage residents, schools, churches, businesses, and government and community organisations in activities that will make the Hastings District a better place to live, work and play. 

At a recent event at the Havelock North Domain, pull-up banners showed messages on how people can “adopt a spot” to keep beautiful, how to prevent a graffiti attack, how to remove graffiti and how to report it.  

4 October 2017

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