Mr Vos returned from holidays at the beginning of November to take up his new role and was faced with one of the council’s biggest challenges to date, the risk of a 35 metre-wide sinkhole opening at the Beaconsfield mine yard.

“Coming back from leave and having the issues that we have been dealing with at Beaconsfield mine has been interesting and has kept things busy,” he said.

”It’s also given me an opportunity to do some things that council was really keen to see and that’s to build those links between council and other levels of government and also to strengthen and build our links with media, and using media to better connect with the community.”

While many might baulk at such a challenge when starting a new job, Mr Vos is ready for the task, with 20 years of experience working in the local government sector before becoming general manager.

He started with the West Tamar Council as a trainee building inspector in 1996, after working as a self-employed builder.

 “We had a young family with five kids under six and the building industry is a bit fickle so when the opportunity came up I thought it was something worth pursuing.”

After studying building surveying, Mr Vos was accredited as an assistant building surveyor and worked in that field for 12 years.

"I worked my way through until I was looking after the building section of council and then when there was a minor shuffle that happened within the organisation I applied for the job of development services manager.”

For the past eight years he has taken care of the regulatory side of the West Tamar Council.

“[It has included] building, plumbing, environmental health, planning, which is always a big one, and it has given me a really good insight into working in that regulated environment because it is quite different. Local government is quite a specialised beast.”

"In recent years Ian [Pearce, former general manager] has sort of taken me alongside and given me a better insight into the wider organisation of council and had me involved in more of the external things we do as a mentoring and training experience.”

Mr Vos said he had a passion for working in local government because he has a genuine ability to make an impact.

“Particularly what I learnt in the regulatory side was that while we are mandated to deal with things in a certain way through building codes, building Acts and legislation and regulation, the application of that is where you can either help or hinder,” he said.

“I was someone who had come out of the industry and wanted to see help rather than hindrance.”

Mr Vos said he believed staff at the council had been successful in finding solutions and ways to help people, and he wanted that culture to continue during his time as general manager.

“You want to make it as smooth and as easy as possible because it is highly regulated and you can make it difficult, there is no doubt about that, and we all hear about processes where people find blockages and things are made difficult,” he said.

“Local government becomes a way in which you can help people. We all grow up in Australia, in that democratic environment and that is a great thing but that democracy then puts barriers around you, but in local government we are dealing with the people … you’ve got that close contact, we are the closest to the people and that is the reality.

“We can genuinely get involved in a problem and help.”

Mr Vos said his long-term goals for the municipality were to build on what had been accomplished by his predecessors.

He believes the council has done well by putting in place a number of plans and programs, and he wants to ensure that those plans are delivered.

“Legana is a really good example. The structure plan we did in Legana saw us do a lot of work, spend a lot of money and do a lot of consultation and got some really good buy-in,” he said. 

“We had a public meeting where we had 300-odd people attend and people now think that the West Tamar Council is going to do something for Legana. We are going to make sure that instead of it being developed in a way that’s run by the developer, it’s being done to a plan that is good for the community.”

It was easy to let a glossy plan sit on the shelf and gather dust says Mr Vos, but he wants to ensure that there is follow through.

“There is nothing that I would address at the West Tamar Council that is wrong or needs attention, what in fact I want to make sure is that it rolls on.

“I also want to look at our organisation and see if we are doing things that are for the best of our community and if we are doing things in a contemporary manner, or are we doing it just because we always have.”

Mr Vos said change was not something to be scared of as local government reform within Tasmania dominates discussion about the sector’s future.

“I read a phrase that I really like which is that ‘resisting change is like holding your breath, if you succeed you die’, you can’t do it, it doesn’t work, the world is changing around us and you have to be able to keep pace with that,” he said.

“Part of my role leading the organisation is to assist people to understand the change, embrace the change and go with the change because we can’t stay the same we have always been.”