Greerton Mainstreet manager Graeme Morrissey is gone without working out a month's notice having earlier tendered his resignation.


Graeme Morrissey is not serving out his notice period as Greerton Mainstreet Manager. His employer, the Greerton Village Association, is paying him out instead.

On Thursday night, the Greerton Village Association decided to pay him out and told him to finish.

The committee changed hands in October with six or seven new members and a new chairman.

Committee chairman Ray Dean has no comment to make, saying it is an employment matter.

Graeme says he doubts the committee understands the role of Mainstreet as an organisation.

'The reason I resigned was that the current committee have vetoed nearly everything that was agreed for by the previous committee, and have put in nothing concrete for the last near five months,” says Graeme.

'It's a real sad day for me to be finishing off. We have had so much support, but you have got this committee on there that are not working, or don't understand what Mainstreet is about. It's a community matter basically.”

The job will have to be filled because retailers are paying a targeted rate to Tauranga City Council to pay a manager's salary, says Graeme.

The previous village association chairman David Mansel says Greerton businesses have been left in limbo by the new committee.

'We don't know what's happening,” says David.

'We don't know what promotions are in store. We haven't been informed of any changes of what's going to be happening.

'We just hear rumours about this, that, and the other.

'I approached the chairman and he said they do have promotions in the pipeline, but I haven't seen anything on paper, it's only hearsay.

'I would say the majority of retailers are disgruntled with the way Graeme's been treated.

'If the committee are not giving him any directives, they can't really have a go at him. That's the way I see it.

'We gave Graeme jobs and he did them, but if he's not being given jobs, he's got nothing to do. I think that's what was happening.”

A similar thing happened about four or five years ago, says David.

A large proportion of Greerton Village Association members became unhappy about the committee and called an extraordinary general meeting and elected a new one.

'It's possible something like that might need to be done again,” says David.

'In a small place like Greerton, half the Greerton retailers have served on the committee and they don't want to go back on again.

'So you get the others who come along and they get on; they have their own agendas, but they don't know any history.

'It's a bit of a shame. But in saying that I was on the committee five years and the committee members know that.

'If they were going to veto anything they could have asked me, ‘What's the history of this particular promotion.' But I wasn't asked.”