City shuffle

MYSTERIOUS EXIT: Departing City Hall community life director Linda Quinn.

City Hall is relying on back-filling key senior management roles internally over the next three months in the wake of yet another director resigning.

Community life director Linda Quinn has been on leave since November and has now resigned from her position.

CEO Martin Cutter said her resignation would be effective on 24 May 2019, after her long service leave concluded.

Connected communities manager Robyn Stevens is currently acting in the director position.

Mr Cutter said this week that recruitment for Ms Quinn’s role would commence “in the first quarter of 2019”.

He said the executive manager people and organisational development positions were also being back-filled internally until a replacement is recruited this quarter.

Meanwhile former finance and strategy director Peter Anderson has been appointed civic accommodation project director to lead efforts to establish civic offices in Mercer Street.

Michael Dugina was appointed to his role of finance and strategy executive director three months ago.

The City did not respond to the Indy’s questions on the reasons for Ms Quinn’s departure.

“We respect the privacy of our employees and do not provide detailed commentary relating to personal information,” Mr Cutter said.

Ms Quinn is the final Geelong Council director to depart the city from the period of the Commission of Inquiry report.

Released in 2016, this report led to the Council’s sacking and triggered a leadership shake-up across the organisation.

Meanwhile two municipal monitors, Jude Munro and Peter Dorling, have costed Geelong ratepayers $77,920 since 2017, at a rate of $1200 per day.

The Minister for Local Government originally appointed to monitors to oversee “good governance” at the council until 2020.

Geelong Mayor Bruce Harwood said he believed council had demonstrated through its actions, as well as provided a strong evidenced-based reason that the monitors are no longer needed.

“Whether the monitors will remain in place until the 2020 elections is a decision for the State Government.”