Charlie Taveira has joined the team at Cobar Shire Council as their new Director of Infrastructure Services.
Having worked in Victoria for more than 30 years, moving interstate was something Mr Taveira and his family had been considering for some time.
It was the hard lockdowns in Victoria during the pandemic that prompted Mr Taveira to finally make the move.
“We have always gravitated towards regional country towns. We just find metros are differ-ent, the people are different. I love country folk, their passion, their spirit,” he said.
Mr Taveira sees the move to Cobar as a step up in his career progression.
He’s had 27 years experience in Local Gov-ernment and also worked for almost five years in the private sector on a number of major infrastructure projects, all in Victoria.
He has formal qualifications in Municipal and Civil Engineering and also a Post Graduate in Business Administration.
“I’ve worked for rural councils and I’ve worked for interface councils—where you’ve got a bit of metro and you’ve got a bit of ur-banization and little a bit of rural/country all in one—and also metro councils,” he said.
While working in a cross section of different councils has presented him with a number of different challenges, he said it’s also given him a broad range of experience and skills.
“I’m hoping to bring that all together and see what we can do here to improve things,” Mr Taveira said.
“I’ve got this mantra that I want to leave things in a better place than where I started.”
So far he’s found Cobar to be unique.
“Previously the largest council I’ve worked for was 1,300km² while this is 44,000, so that presents another challenge but also some really good opportunities,” he said.
“The road network is enormous.”
He believes new technology may be used to help streamline some of council’s current pro-cesses.
Having been at council for less than a week, Mr Taveira said he’s still settling in and getting his head around all that his new role entails, in particular all the infrastructure projects he will be working on with other council staff.
His first big project is the drainage program in the industrial area. (Council’s general man-ager Peter Vlatko reported to last week’s Ordi-nary Council Meeting that $1.3 million worth of pipes for the project have been ordered.)
Last week Mr Taveira was also briefed on the water reserves project and is hoping to get up to speed on more of council’s infrastructure projects throughout this coming week.
He’s also keen to get out and meet people—on Saturday he took part in Parkrun, and then headed to the Cobar Races to socialize.
In his spare time he likes to run, go bush-walking, and “just get outdoors”.
“I like to keep healthy and fit, mainly be-cause of the number of kids we have,” he said.
Mr Taveira has 10 children aging from 20 years down to 18 months and, for education purposes (one son is currently in the middle of Year 12), the family will be staying in Mel-bourne for a while.
“I miss my family—at some stage we’re hoping to move the family here,” he said.
In his new role with Cobar Shire he aims to ensure there is better communication with the community and to better promote all the good things that council is doing.
