Plan to up salary costs ‘a disgrace’ – Bridges
Commissioner: Council will be accountable for investment in staff
Plans to increase the salary costs for Tauranga City Council’s staff by nearly $15 million within the next year despite a $2 billion financial hole have been labelled a “disgrace” and “shocking” yet “predictable”.
The council, however, has justified the proposed spending as helping to deliver one of the most important investment programmes in the city’s history.
Council commissioners voted at a meeting on Monday to approve a draft version of the Long-term Plan 2021-2031, which will now be edited and sent to auditors ahead of public consultation from May 7.
The plan included a proposal to increase council staff salary costs from $66.3m in 2021 to $80.5m in 2022.
In response to a question from commissioner Shadrach Rolleston at the meeting, council staff confirmed the increase was for more full-time equivalent staff members (FTES) across the organisation plus a “catch-up from Covid” after salary costs were frozen last year.
However, when the council was asked after the meeting how many FTES were budgeted in each of the years presented, a spokesman said salary budgets did not include detail of such staffing.
On March 18 the council told the Bay of Plenty Times it had 772 staff. This included 46 fixed-term staff and 726 permanent employees – a total of 727 full-time equivalents.
Tauranga MP Simon Bridges told the Times the proposed salary cost increase was a “disgrace”.
“Too many in and around our council think they improve things in Tauranga by more staff with fatter pay packets when more often than not the reverse is true. It just makes things worse.”
Bridges said, in his view, “under Labour’s commissioners this terrible trend will only continue and speed up”.
In the draft plan’s breakdown of staff salary costs, the total was expected to increase from $80.5m in 2022 then to $85m in 2023 and $85.5m in 2024.
Bridges said he was concerned that housing, transport and other services would lose out despite the city’s rates increasing.
“This is so predictable. Rates up, bureaucracy up, and still no results,” Bridges said.
Investments in the areas he mentioned were included in the plan’s anticipated $4.5b spend on capital projects over the next 10 years.
Commissioner Stephen Selwood said the staff investment was being made alongside a requirement for “clear accountability” for delivering a return on investment for ratepayers.
“Ultimately, these measures are all about making Tauranga better – a city people can be proud of and a place where they and their children will want to live, learn, work and play.”
Mount Maunganui Residents, Ratepayers and Retailers Association president Michael O’neill said the group was “absolutely” concerned.
“The need in our district is infrastructure development, not spending ratepayers’ money on staff salaries. That’s what people have been told; ‘we are increasing rates to manage infrastructure need of the district’ but a huge sum of that is going on salaries.”
Papamoa Residents and Ratepayers Association chairman Philip Brown said: “It’s just shocking that they can expect to increase their staff salaries by that much.
“They have too many