David Farmer retires as chief executive on 2 September, after five and a half years in the job. He took it in April 2021, with the council under administration following its financial collapse, and as we set out on Sunday 26 July, he leaves an organisation whose finances have been rebuilt and which is now positioning itself for major projects. Councillors used the 28 July meeting to acknowledge that record and to put the transition arrangements in place.

The acting appointment

Mr Loader takes the role while the permanent search runs. Mayor Lawrie McKinna described the appointment as essential to maintaining organisational stability for staff and residents during the transition, and said council's priority is to ensure stable leadership as we move through this process.

The mayor described Mr Loader as an experienced local government executive with a background in water and sewer operations, environmental health, development assessment, compliance, asset management and emergency management. For a council whose water and sewer business is one of its largest operations, and whose recovery has been a story about operational discipline, that is a relevant set of credentials rather than a generic one.

The panel, and the delegation

This is the part of the 28 July decision with the longest tail. Council appointed a CEO Recruitment Panel comprising Cr McKinna, Cr Mouland, Cr Crowley, Cr MacGregor, Cr McNamara and Cr Stanton, together with independent member Kath Roach, managing director of SINC Solutions. The panel has been delegated authority to oversee the recruitment and selection process.

Delegated authority is not the same as making the decision. On council's own account, the appointment of a permanent chief executive will be subject to a resolution of Council following completion of the recruitment and selection process. So the panel runs the search and the shortlist; the whole chamber makes the call. Council also says all available councillors will get a workshop or facilitated discussion with the independent panel member and the appointed recruitment consultant, to help settle what capabilities the next chief executive needs.

Council states the process will follow the Local Government Act 1993 and the Office of Local Government's Guidelines for the Appointment and Oversight of General Managers. Mayor McKinna said council is committed to “a rigorous, merit-based recruitment process”.

Why the independent seat matters

Our view, and it is a view. The single most consequential detail here is the independent member. Recruiting a chief executive is the one decision a council makes about its own administration, and it is the decision where a chamber's internal politics has the most room to operate. Putting an outside professional on the panel, and running capability workshops with all available councillors rather than only panel members, are both structural choices that make the process harder to steer. Whether they work is not something anyone can judge yet, but they are the right shape.

The thing to watch is not the panel. It is the gap between the panel's recommendation and the chamber's resolution. That is where a recruitment process either holds or does not, and it is a moment that will be minuted.

What happens next

Mr Farmer finishes on 2 September and Mr Loader steps up. The recruitment consultant and the capability workshops come first, then a search, then a shortlist, then a resolution of the full council. No timeline for that final step has been published, and we will not invent one. We will report the resolution when it comes.

Freshness check, 29 July 2026

We said above that we had not seen the minutes, and that the minutes are the document that will confirm the wording. Re-checked the council’s business-papers portal on 29 July: the 28 July Extraordinary Council Meeting still carries an agenda and no minutes, so this story remains the council’s own account of what it resolved rather than the formal record. That is not a delay: the portal states its rule plainly, that minutes of meetings are confirmed at the next Ordinary meeting. Council’s published schedule puts the next Ordinary Council Meeting on Tuesday 25 August 2026 at 6.30pm in the Central Coast Chambers, so that is the date the resolution wording becomes checkable. We will check it then.

Update, 27 August 2026. We said we would check on 25 August, and the meeting did not happen. Council’s own meetings page now records that the 25 August 2026 Ordinary Council Meeting was adjourned to Monday 31 August 2026 at 5:30pm to be held in Central Coast Chambers. So the confirmation of the 28 July minutes, and with it the checkable wording of the resolution, moves to 31 August. Nothing above changes; we are saying so rather than going quiet on a date we gave you.

Update, 28 August 2026: we have the minutes, and we were wrong about why we could not get them

We told you twice that the resolution wording would not be checkable until the minutes were confirmed at the next Ordinary meeting. That was our misreading, and it is worth owning because it cost a month. The portal’s rule is that minutes are confirmed at the next Ordinary meeting, and we read confirmation as publication. It is not. The minutes of the 28 July Extraordinary meeting are published, and we have now downloaded and read them in full. Confirmation on 31 August is a separate step that makes them the settled record; it was never what stood between us and the wording.

The appointment was made as resolution C-26/1068, moved by Mayor Lawrie McKinna and seconded by Cr McNamara, and carried with fourteen votes in favour and none against. Our account of it, taken from the council’s media release, was accurate as far as it went. The minutes carry terms the release did not.

It was decided in confidential session. At 4.10pm the meeting excluded the press, the public and council officers under section 10A(2)(a) of the Local Government Act 1993, on the stated ground that the matter comprised discussion of personnel matters that relate to the employment conditions of specific individuals. Three officers remained: the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief People Officer and the Team Leader, Civic Support. The meeting returned to open session at 4.15pm. That ground is the ordinary and lawful basis for closing a meeting on a staffing matter and we are not suggesting otherwise. It is worth recording that the whole thing took five minutes, and that it came before the chamber as a mayoral minute rather than as a staff report.

The terms, which the release did not give. Mr Loader acts from 3 September 2026 until the earliest of three things: a permanent Chief Executive Officer commencing, a period of twelve months from his commencement, or a further resolution of Council. The twelve-month outer limit is new information; the release described the appointment without one. The resolution also provides that if Mr Loader is on leave before a permanent appointment is made, the Mayor, after consulting the CEO Recruitment Panel, may appoint one of the council’s Directors as Interim Acting Chief Executive Officer for that period. All functions currently delegated by Council to the Chief Executive Officer are delegated to him under section 377.

One drafting detail is a useful piece of civics. The resolution notes that the position of Chief Executive Officer is the position of ‘General Manager’ for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1993, and resolves that the position of Acting General Manager be titled Acting Chief Executive Officer. The Act knows only a General Manager. Chief Executive Officer is the council’s own styling of a statutory office, which is why the appointment is made under sections 334, 336 and 351 in the General Manager’s name and then retitled.

Our view, labelled as such. The release told you who. The minutes tell you the terms, and the terms are the part that constrains anybody. A twelve-month cap and a named fallback if the acting appointee goes on leave are the difference between an appointment and an arrangement, and neither was reported anywhere we could see at the time. The lesson we are taking is the smaller one: we parked a checkable fact for a month on an assumption about a publishing rule that we never tested. The document was there the whole time.