Last week featured a major announcement for Dubbo Regional Council as CEO Michael McMahon revealed he would be retiring on April 1, 2021.
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After a career that spanned 47 years, including 40 years in local government and spread across metropolitan and regional councils, Michael retires with a very distinguished career.
In his last three and a half years at Dubbo, Michael has done an outstanding job of bringing together the former Dubbo City and Wellington Shire Councils. When he arrived, things were tough. The organisation was struggling with cultural, financial, structural changes and staff morale was low.
Merging any two organisations is difficult and Dubbo and Wellington were very different in terms of structure, budgets, and even community size. When council was elected in September 2017 this was evident, and when Michael arrived three months later he set about fixing the issues. The brilliant thing about Michael was that not only did he bring extensive local government experience, but he had also dealt with similar issues with previous councils. He was recommended to our council based on that experience and he knew the challenges and how to address them.
He initially arrived as interim general manager with the goal to get council into shape. He did such a good job and was also enjoying the task so much that when the time came to appoint a full-time CEO, he applied and was successful.
He helped steady the ship and with his experience and reputation, was able to attract highly-credentialled senior staff to help rebuild after the loss of talented and knowledgeable directors and managers.
He set about healing the split between Dubbo and Wellington and ensuring the two organisations worked as one. He also looked at the most urgent areas for capital works and began those.
Fast-forward three years and council is running like a well-oiled machine. There are still challenges, still goals to meet and the job is definitely far from over, but I think it is fair to say we are further ahead than any of us thought we would be when the job started at the end of 2017.
Michael leaves with a long list of achievements. The health of the council is certainly the major one, but the drought-proofing measures currently progressing such as the cross-city pipeline, the Dubbo Regional Cycling Facility, Wellington Aquatic Leisure Centre and all of the great progress at Dubbo City Regional Airport are testament to Michael. There are plenty of other projects that Michael started that will come to fruition over the next decade, so he will have a long and lasting legacy.
He is committed to finishing strong and will leave a great environment when he walks out for the last time on April 1. The next CEO will have big shoes to fill when they are appointed after the local government election in September.