Tauranga ratepayers group slams secrecy around Marty Grenfell's resignation

A Tauranga ratepayers group is slamming the secrecy around the council chief executive's resignation.

The Mount Maunganui Ratepayers, Residents and Retailers Association is demanding to know whether Marty Grenfell will receive a payout following the resignation.

Mayor Mahé Drysdale announced Grenfell's resignation earlier this week, without providing the reasons into his resignation or any details of a payout.

Drysdale, Grenfell and all city councillors have refused to talk to RNZ about the matter.

Grenfell had faced calls to resign following a review into the Mount Maunganui landslide in January which claimed six lives and found the landslide was preventable.

But Grenfell was initially adamant he wouldn't step down, saying the landslide was a failure of the system, not one person.

Association president Michael O'Neill said the council now needed to be transparent.
"It is ratepayers that are funding this if he is getting a golden handshake - and ratepayers have every right to know how their money is being spent."

O'Neill said many residents would be furious if Grenfell had been promised a payout.

"The community would be quite up in arms if he had, there are businesses downtown that are really struggling since the Mount collapsed.

"They would probably deserve a payout more than Marty Grenfell getting a golden handshake for sure."

The Davison report found the council had been warned repeatedly, by consultant after consultant, and as early as 1999, of the risk of landslides to those staying at Mount Maunganui Holiday Park.

But the reports had gone unheeded and were never escalated to seriousness they deserved, it found.

O'Neill said he was pleased Grenfell was resigning, because that summed up the "sentiment of the community".

"Local MPs have also called for him to resign, and rightly so. We don't know [why he is going] we would like to know, we would like to have some inkling in this turnaround in events."

O'Neill said senior managers should also have their positions reviewed following the Davison report, as well as the culture at the council, where secrecy had become the norm.