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Fergus Power
Fergus Power
Waitaki District Council chief executive Fergus Power will leave his post next year.

Mr Power announced his decision to step down yesterday, and said he planned to move to Thailand with his wife, Tri, after he finished at the council on June 4.

In a statement, Mr Power said while he had enjoyed leading the Waitaki District Council and contributing to the community’s Covid-19 response, "family comes first".

His wife wanted to be closer to her family in Thailand, as the Covid-19 pandemic had disrupted travel around the world, he said.

Before Covid-19, they regularly visited Thailand.

Mr Power has been in the role since September 2017, replacing former chief executive Michael Ross.

Before then, he was chief executive at the Wairoa District Council, a role he had held since 2014.

He will leave the Waitaki District Council just shy of four years into his five-year contract.

Mr Power said he still had much to achieve before he left "in terms of strengthening council’s capacity to assist in making the Waitaki the best place to be".

That included a "heightened focus on attracting new businesses and residents to the district, while working with Tourism Waitaki and industry stakeholders to maximise domestic visitation" to strengthen the district’s resilience in "the face of any further social and economic shocks", Mr Power said.

Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said Mr Power’s decision came as a surprise, but it was "entirely understandable given the unusual circumstances in which many couples who have families in distant parts of the world now find themselves".

"We’ll be going through a process for recruitment, but it’s about business as usual for the next 10 months," Mr Kircher said.

 


 

Comments

Maybe its time to back people with an affinity to the region, cripes the region produces so much talent that ends up living in Wellington or Auckland who would love to trade their one bedroom apartment in Windy Wellington or Wet Auckland for the great life style the Waitaki
As a boy from Oamaru who had worked for had Majored in Economics; Marketing Management and Market Research at Otago and who had worked for Blue Chip Multi Nats, I would have loved to come back to Oamaru or Dunedin etc!
Make Otago/Southland/South Island a place where smart people want to live! Now we can go skiing, trout fishing, etc and still develop our software or what ever in seconds to the world!