Tauranga City councillors are set to get pay cuts under the new councillor salary regime proposed by the Remuneration Authority.

If approved, the regime that comes into effect after the October 2013 local body elections will see councillors pay cut by about $5000, down from $73,565 to $69,500.

Tauranga City Councillors are in for a pay cut of about $5000.

The extras certain councillors are paid as committee chairs will in future be paid from a separate pool.

The change abolishes the pool system operating at present where councils are given an allocation of money for councillors to divide among themselves.

Under the new system councillors will have a reduced base salary, and access to a $104,000 fund for extras responsibilities in positions like committee chairs.

'I think what they have done is a good idea personally, because it lets people know well in advance before an election what the remuneration would be,” says Mayor Stuart Crosby.

'Up and down New Zealand it seems to be reasonably well accepted as a better methodology than the previous one.”

The reality is Tauranga City Councillors were reasonably well paid compared with the rest of New Zealand, says Stuart.

Tauranga councillors receive a salary of $73,565 while committee chairs receive $80,564, and the Deputy Mayor recieves $83,564.

The Mayor's pay is also set by the remuneration authority, but is outside the pool. He receives a salary of $121,940 for effectively being chairman of the board of a commercial entity with an asset base of $3billion and a $40million cash flow.

On a councillor per ratepayer cost Tauranga's councillors are estimated at $6.68 per head of population. This compares favourably with Wairoa at $17.17, and Queenstown Lakes at $12.69, but drops compared with Christchurch where each councillor costs $3.05 per citizen.

The size of a council's salary ‘pool' was set according to a system that took into account population, plus the asset base, plus the rate of growth, the capital works programme - boxes that were all ticked by Tauranga.

'So when you added all that up for Tauranga which was a rapidly growing city, the salaries increased quite dramatically,” says Stuart.

'Whereas this new methodology, generally is more based around population.”

The Remuneration Authority report says there will be increased focus on hours of work in future reviews, which are also a part of the new regime. The authority sees councillors' roles as part time, but says it will retain flexibility to reflect differing work practices and pressures.

'In some respects it's the type of job where I think all my colleagues can't hold down a full time job,” says Stuart.

'One week they might do 20 hours, the next week 40 plus, that's the difficulty.

'It's not consistent and that's the problem. Most of them would struggle to hold down another full time job. It's part time in that respect but it's difficult to hold down another job unless you are self-employed.”

While Tauranga city councillors have pay cuts of $5000, some councillors about the country have pay cuts of up to $17,500 – while others have pay rises of more than $16,000.

While the amounts seem significant the authority believes the real differences will be much less as meeting fees and special rates are subsumed into the base rate.

Future pay reviews will take place in the year prior to the elections. A regular review process is expected to pick up the incremental changes in role that occur in all areas, and over time should build a broader consensus on the nature and amount of members' remuneration.

The new levels of remuneration recommended amount to an overall increase in remuneration costs of $3.1million or 8.9 per cent across the 77 regional and district authorities, or $1.17 per citizen. The remuneration views the overall increase justified in terms of equity and fairness, and will be simpler to manage, and save staff time.

The system is being changed because inequities are sneaking into the existing pools system where councillors with similar sized responsibilities in different councils are being paid different salaries.

Tauranga City Councillors are not eligible for additional payments for sitting on other boards, unlike BOP regional councillors, some of whom make thousands more than their base council salary for a seat on a council controlled organisation or CCO, or Quayside Holdings.

Tauranga councillors also work fulltime, compared with representatives on some other councils who are still able to maintain day jobs.