Central Otago District Council chief executive Sanchia Jacobs, who finished in her role last Friday, said comments — not just online — about councils had gone too far.
Ms Jacobs has been on the receiving end of some nasty emails and she wondered what drove, and what was the mental state of, many of the senders.
"When my resignation was made public I got an anonymous email saying my resignation ‘was one of the two happiest days of my life when I read it. The other was when that b.... Jacinda resigned’. And that the whole of Central Otago was ‘celebrating’," Ms Jacobs said.
"You kind of think, it is anonymous. And then wonder what is happening in their life that the two happiest days of their life are the resignation of two women that have nothing to do with them. What a sad life it is, that they get on their email and write this.
"That was a phenomenal one. I will pop it in the scrapbook and it’ll be one to laugh at in years to come."
In many ways councils were faceless organisations and that was probably the way it should be, she said.
"But people can be very quick to blame. People that work here are really good people, get up every day to do their mahi. Then you get ‘the council does this, the council does that’. It takes away the humanity of people who work here."
She said working in a small community such as Central Otago meant the comments were magnified, unlike when she worked in a big city such as Auckland.
"People say council should pay for that, council should do this, the rates are too high but you need to do more. It is really hard on people. They go to the neighbour’s barbecue and they get this barrage of comments about the council.
"I’m sure if you’re a florist or work at a kindy you get such nice comments. You miss out a lot of that when you work at a council."
She said the barbecuing phrase was a common term at councils.
"About not wanting to go to the barbecue, being bailed up at a barbecue, not wanting to say ‘I work at council’ and them saying — ‘oh do you?"’
Comments had got worse, she said.
"Across the board a lot of people out there are quite liberal with their comments, whether it be about council or anything they disagree with."
As a chief executive you had to expect some things but it was not very nice for other council employees, she said.
"It just wears them down. Yet 99% of the time, things are going well — the commuting on the roads, turning on the tap and reading books."
People felt they had an awful lot of licence at the moment, she said.
"I would love to encourage people to stand up to that, tell a different story, say ‘that is not my experience’. I am going to do more than that — will even more so now I am no longer here.
It took a lot of strength to say to people "hey come on" when they made offensive comments.
"They’re the same people who complain about their kids getting bullied at school, yet they are doing the same thing."
A faceless council and online abuse were two separate things but they clashed and had an impact on council people.
Despite the abuse it had been a great five years with the council, Ms Jacobs said.
"We have an amazing council here, which no-one should take for granted. I got to do some cool stuff and it will be sad to hand over the keys."
Her next job was working for Beca as the director for local government and she would remain in Alexandra, she said.
But she had initially been seconded to Hawke’s Bay to help set up the recovery authority in the area from the cyclone.
