New Northern Beaches Council CEO Ray Brownlee outlines his plans for the area
NEW Northern Beaches CEO Ray Brownlee intends to operate a council that focuses on a ‘smarter, not harder’ approach to getting things done. As part of this, he has already sounded out his top priorities.
Manly
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THERE is “no reason savings can’t be achieved” as part of the ongoing merger process according to Northern Beaches Council’s new boss Ray Brownlee.
Speaking with the Manly Daily from a holiday in Singapore, Mr Brownlee — who was at the helm of Randwick Council for almost 15 years — backed his financial savvy to get good results for ratepayers.
“A better practice review of council will be undertaken to ensure that our services are provided efficiently and effectively without compromising the level of service that our community deserves,” he said.
And it would mean working smarter, not harder and incorporating technology over employing extra hands.
“I have a philosophy, if we are doing initiatives we shouldn’t be putting on extra staff,” he said. “We should we should be looking within the organisation to get things done.”
Mr Brownlee will replace Mark Ferguson — who steered the council through the start of the merger process and signed a mutual agreement with councillors to walk away with more than 38-weeks pay in March.
Mr Brownlee beat out more than 100 other candidates for the role, which was sealed on Tuesday night when the councillors voted behind closed doors to award him a five-year contract.
The 53-year-old, who lives in the Georges River area in Sydney’s South, is believed to be earning an annual salary package of $495,000 as part of the deal.
He has 30 years experience in Local Government, and was just days away from pushing the button on a merger between Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra councils before a State Government backflip.
“From all the preparations we did in Randwick, there is no reason why the savings can’t be achieved,” he said.
“I need to get there and have a look at everything, but I can’t see why there wouldn’t be savings.”
KEY OBJECTIVES
●A customer service-focused organisation
●A leader in the community
●A leader in the industry
●An innovative council
●An employer of choice
●Achieving economies of scale from the ongoing merger
●Environmental sustainability
He said his previous successes spoke for themselves.
“Certainly over my 14 years at Randwick we made the context financially sustainable my intention is to do the same at the northern beaches,” he said.
He has also vowed to bring a new level of transparency to the council, saying his leadership would be resident-centric.
He said he would need time to look into the council’s business model, but a key growth area would be improving customer service and how the council reacts with residents, businesses and visitors.
“I want the resident to be the centre of everything we do,” he said.
“We will be innovative and efficient, as we implement a digital strategy that puts our customers at the centre of what council does.
“I am very open, very transparent people can ring at any time to have a chat about things.
“I am not afraid to make tough decisions for the community.”
He highlighted similarities between Randwick and the northern beaches, and said he understood how important the environment was to a beachside community.
Among the biggest issues on the northern beaches are overdevelopment and ad hoc planning as well as traffic congestion.
The Greater Sydney Commission’s plans for an extra 3400 dwellings — an 18 per cent growth — on the peninsula by 2036 to meet housing targets.
Mr Brownlee said he would need to look into the fine grain detail, and speak with councillors, but said most importantly any population growth “has to be planned properly”.
He pointed to the recent one-year freeze of the low-rise medium-density housing code, signed off by Planning Minister Anthony Roberts following lobbying from the council.
That code would have meant terraces, manor houses (a two-storey, four-dwelling building) and dual-occupancy homes could be approved without a development application.
“You can’t have duplexes everywhere, you need to plan those and need to have discussions with the community,” he said.
“We need to look at transport and how we deal with increasing density coming to the area managing that and maintaining the environment and doing so as cheaply as possible.”