Community Services Group Manager Appointed

Mr Tienie Cloete has been appointed as Waitaki District Council’s Community Services Group Manager and starts work in Oamaru on 1st December 2009. Mr Cloete’s appointment has followed an extensive recruitment exercise involving 48 applications, which reduced finally to five interviewed candidates. Council were indeed very lucky with the quality of candidates to choose from.

Mr Cloete emigrated from South Africa to New Zealand at the end of 2004 with his wife, Kitty, son Unes and daughter Ameldi. Mr Cloete has had 17 years in Local Government, 12 of these in South Africa and holds a PhD relating to strategic planning in the leisure industry. For the last five years Mr Cloete has been Recreation Manager for Taupo District Council. His experience includes managing leisure services, events facilities (aquatics, convention centre, indoor stadium and sport stadiums), managing a museum and art gallery, community programmes, parks, reserve planning, cemetery and sanitation.

Mr Cloete’s interests include hiking, mountain biking and golf so there will be plenty of scope for those interests in the Waitaki District.

Mr Cloete looks forward to working with the Waitaki District Council, the Community Services team and the community and the challenge of achieving positive community outcomes with limited resources.