Our View: Looking forward to new approach

Immense curiosity and anticipation surrounds the appointment of Ken Paterson as the Tauranga City Council's chief executive, a 59-year-old whose age belies his apparently huge enthusiasm for the job.
Mr Paterson's ability to bring a whole new approach to this key role in the future of Tauranga is interesting because he has never served in the upper echelons of a territorial local authority.
He comes to the job with four years experience leading the Northland Regional Council - and regional councils are quite different beasts to the vast majority of other New Zealand local authorities.
For a start, they did not come along until 1989, replacing the old catchment boards, but with new environmental functions tacked on.
The succeeding years have seen them evolve into tackling important regional planning and transportation tasks - reflecting the recent name change of Environment Bay of Plenty to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.
Prior to the Northland Regional Council, Mr Paterson's experience of local authorities was less direct. He spent five years as the CEO of TechScape, an infrastructure works and maintenance company formed by the former Waitakere and North Shore city councils.
So it would seem that his ability to draw on huge private sector management experience, before his late arrival into council bureaucracies, was regarded as a big plus by Tauranga's mayor and 10 councillors, who made the final selection.
This personable engineer, who hails from Scotland, must have impressed during the interview process to stand out from the three others on the shortlist because he was the unanimous choice.
Part of his attraction to the council was that he was not steeped in councils, and promised to bring a new and possibly unique perspective to solving the issue of how a council can keep delivering to its community while being financially bogged down.
Will he be able to bring his considerable wisdom to bear on the running of a city - a far more political beast than a regional council?
The council obviously feels he can, and has backed his ability to come up with a fresh approach and new ideas.
Excitement and enthusiasm were qualities about Mr Paterson that impressed his former boss, the chairman of the Northland Regional Council, together with a good dose of Scottie humour.
It will be fascinating to see how he delivers for Tauranga and what he brings to the relationship between the city council and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council.