Tauranga City Councillors pay packets will drop following the next election after councillors today decided to cut rates by almost $5000, based on the Remuneration Authority's pay regime.
After the October 12 local body elections Tauranga City councillors base pay will drop from $74,171 to $69,500. Allowances for committee chairmans will also be reduced.
Tauranga City Councillors will all have their pay rates cut post October election.
It's a recommendation to the incoming council that will leave $97,250 allocated money unspent.
The deputy mayor's extra $10,000 is to be cut to $5000, meaning David Stewart's annual salary will drop from $84,223 to $74,500 – should he keep the position post-election.
The chairmen of the major council committees also take a big hit, with their pay dropping from $81,226 to $71,500.
The unallocated $97,250 results from the councillors at today's workshop meeting deciding to keep the current working committee structure, instead of spreading the money across ‘portfolio' holders.
Council chief executive officer Garry Poole says the system failed at Wellington City Council.
Garry says the change in Mayor saw a working system of one committee and seven portfolio leaders, change to one committee and 14 portfolio leaders.
'That started to come apart,” says Garry.
'From a staff point of view we had councillors looking for work to justify getting remunerated, and that didn't work.”
The councillors view that they are in council because they are interested in the work and wish to serve the community was supported by Garry.
Councillor Catherine Stewart says she finds keeping track of the council working parties difficult, becasue at the present time they are not advertised in the council meetings schedule.
The city council has 19 committees, including the racecourse committee, the marina committee, the airport committee and a number of transient single project working groups, like the Greerton Library working group, the city hotel working group, the marine precinct working group and the waterfront redevelopment working group.
In future working group meetings and sub-committee meetings will be included in the council calendar.
7 comments
Oh The Pain !!
Posted on 08-07-2013 19:46 | By kopchai
Pales into insignificance to my paltry pensioners income and to latest hefty rises in cost of living..In real terms the saving of $90,000 relates to less than keeping a criminal in jail !!!
re election
Posted on 08-07-2013 21:45 | By Capt_Kaveman
on all parts i hope none of them make it, reduce costs how about council cars used for personal use just watch in the morning how many have a council funded car
2013
Posted on 09-07-2013 12:28 | By Poseidon
Must be an election year
How stupid do they think we are ?
Posted on 09-07-2013 14:08 | By What A Useless Council
What a lot of ... they spend $2m on a reorg, increase the numbers of staff, pay the new ones more than the old and then come up with this. Sort your staff pay rates out. Have a look at Manager salaries and that 3rd tier of your org. Untouched during the recent shambles and still getting paid mega for not delivering.
Misleading headline
Posted on 09-07-2013 14:19 | By verandric
When I read "pay cuts all round" I hopefully thought this included the CEO and the rest of the bureaucracy. Alas, no. They will all have their snouts in the trough, more than wiping out any concessions make by the coucillors.
future reductions
Posted on 09-07-2013 14:29 | By terminator
Councillors pay rates should be tied to rates; that is if rates go up by 5% their salaries decrease by 5% and vice versa. This way ratepayers come first not last, as is and has been the current situation.
Great News
Posted on 09-07-2013 17:17 | By Jitter
And about bloody time. Pity the TCC staff audit did not reduce their numbers by about 150 instead of increasing them by around 4. A second fully independant honest audit should be now be instigated (will cost a bit more)with no TCC staff involvement in the audit result at all. All of the staff audits I was involved in during my over 40 year career were carried out independantly and senior staff of the organisation were only involved when the audit report was complete and recommendations were made by the auditing company.
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