The man who illuminated waste fee mismanagement says Mark Dixon, who oversaw his first council meeting on Monday night, needs to reduce the churn of workers.

"When you look at the last three years, staff turnover is just under 40 per cent of staff leaving and having to be replaced," Mr Mitchell said.

"This indicates poor senior and human resource management a task that Mr Dixon needs to pay attention to."

Mr Mitchell pointed to statistics featured on the Know Your Council website showing in 2017-18 Wodonga Council replaced 16.21 per cent of its workforce.

That was higher than similar councils (11.89 per cent) and councils as a whole in Victoria (13.20 per cent).

Mr Mitchell suggested that higher than average figure was "definitely related to bullying, intimidation and pressure on staff".

"I joined the council in 2007 and during my 10 years there I witnessed and became aware of several colleagues being intimidated, harrassed and bullied," he said.

Mr Dixon said he had found a "committed and loyal" staff.

"What I've got to do is make sure that we attract people, that we retain them and when we've got them we actually professionally develop them," he said.

"I'm really keen that we invest, it's alright having a very lean budget but that budget has got to provision for the professional development of our people in the council, so we can offer them opportunities to grow.

"Really I want people to come into council and....challenge to be a future director, a future CEO."

Mr Dixon said the employees he had spoken to were "very happy in the workplace".

"I think it's a pretty good culture," he said.

Mr Dixon, who started at the city three weeks ago, declined to put a figure on what he believed was a healthy annual staff turnover level.