The former Waitaki District mayor has taken on a new role as chief executive of Salisbury Street Foundation, based in Christchurch.
The foundation — a charitable trust — runs a halfway house for men who have been involved in criminal offending and spent significant periods in prison.
It aims to prevent further offending and to facilitate their safe reintegration into the community.
"It’s good work," Mr Kircher said.
"It’s really important that the men we have here, rather than go straight out into the community, they get to basically live in a way and in a programme that gets them ready for that.
"They’re normally here anywhere from nine months through to a couple years, sometimes longer. It just depends on the particular needs they have."
He was "doing my best to continue doing good work" with his new role.
"In my last role as mayor, it was working for the community directly. And indirectly, part of that was benefiting families and then individuals.
"This is kind of the other way around, it’s helping individuals with their reintegration but in doing so it helps their families and also helps the community."
Mr Kircher is splitting his time between Oamaru and Christchurch.
Having had time to reflect since ending his 12-year tenure as mayor, Mr Kircher still felt he made the right call.
"I felt like it was the right time for me to leave, I’m as sure of that now as I was then.
"When you’ve been in the role I’ve been in and you finish, particularly getting to finish on my terms as I did, it’s really about letting the next lot get on with it and they’ll do the best they can do."
He was full of support for mayor Melanie Tavendale who was deputy mayor under Mr Kircher for the last two terms.
"There was a couple of surprises in the election overall but her being elected certainly wasn’t one of them."
The current council had their work cut out for them, he said.
"The last six years have been pretty tumultuous with government reforms from the current and previous government so that obviously hasn’t gone away and they’ve got the additional challenges of regional reform and also things like rates capping and so on.
"We’ve had those years of challenges and they haven’t got any easier.
"I certainly wish her and all the councillors the very best."
