Barbara McKerrow is CEO of Wellington City Council, on the south-west tip of New Zealand’s North Island. The city sits on a major earthquake fault line and is home to more than 210,000 people.

While a pandemic is one risk we anticipate when preparing for emergencies, it’s not something we have experienced before. Our systems are geared towards physical emergencies like earthquakes or floods, yet here people continue to work, we look out the window at the world and nothing appears broken, but there’s a profound impact on the economic, social and cultural life of our city.

It means local government leaders have to respond differently. The challenge for CEOs is that we are expected to quickly bring normality back to the city, keep delivering essential services, and at the same time meet emergency obligations and develop a pandemic response and recovery plan.

We must transform the way we work and partner with stakeholders to understand what is happening in our city, so we can respond in an agile way. Our measures have included:

• Setting up Crisis Management and Pandemic Response teams with clear workstreams covering the immediate response, service delivery, community welfare and recovery.

• Establishing a Transformation and City Recovery unit to help us adjust to this challenging new environment and take a pro-active approach to post-COVID-19 needs.

• Working with our economic development agency and chamber of commerce to understand business needs and how we can assist, eg. a group of key business leaders was formed to provide strategic recovery advice to the mayor’s office.

• Partnering with innovation and industry groups to share a contact tracing app with city businesses and council facilities, in the absence of a national approach.

• Joining forces with social welfare agencies to ensure every single homeless person in our city had somewhere to stay, that there was a safe place for them to go if they tested positive to COVID-19, and that people were fed.

Showing compassion and empathy is important during times of suffering. So, our Executive Leadership Team made a 10% wage sacrifice until the end of 2020 and froze next year’s salaries, with the savings going to fund the needs of community groups in the City of Wellington. The mayor and councillors decided to do the same, resulting in a significant joint contribution of about $340,000. Building a resilient community has always been a vital part of our job.

Barbara McKerrow
Chief Executive Officer
Wellington City Council