Council CEO payout revealed
The former chief executive of Nelson’s council Clare Hadley was paid more than $70,000 in a severance settlement, the council’s annual report reveals.
The yearly summary of the Nelson City Council’s financials was adopted at a full council meeting yesterday.
The summary of the council’s remuneration reveals Hadley was paid $371,669 in the financial year to June 2017. Her ‘‘severance package’’ was $70,245. The report states her holiday pay entitlement included $2939 that was accrued after June 30. Hadley was paid $309,426 in the previous financial year.
An earlier version of the annual report had her total remuneration at $413,151, but was amended at the meeting to the $371,669 figure.
Councillor Luke Acland queried that at yesterday’s meeting and was told by a council officer, ‘‘the actual remuneration hasn’t changed, it’s really just a disclosure of it’’.
Advice from Audit New Zealand had prompted the change, which was ‘‘in relation to how a notice period is dealt with from a disclosure perspective’’.
It’s not known what the specific components of her remuneration were, as staff said it wasn’t appropriate to discuss, but it was confirmed the remuneration figure did not include the more than $70k severance package referred to later in the report.
Nelson Mayor Rachel Reese said she couldn’t discuss precise details of the settlement between the council and Hadley as it was part of a ‘‘privacy agreement’’.
Questions over what may have led to her resignation, and how the severance package was calculated, remain unanswered due to privacy conditions, but Reese said included in the payment was holiday pay and ‘‘all the normal stuff that goes with ceasing employment’’.
Hadley resigned in May this year, indicating that she did not want to seek another five-year term as chief executive.
Hadley had her final day at the council on June 22 – five months before her contract was due to end on December 17.
When asked why Hadley hadn’t stayed on, Reese said it had been Hadley’s decision. However Hadley worked out part of her notice, to June 22, and is understood to have been paid the remainder in lieu of notice.
Reese said they had reached a ‘‘mutually agreeable’’ final employment date and handover to the council’s interim chief executive, David Hammond, had gone well.
‘‘I certainly couldn’t fault that area at all, in terms of what happened,’’ Reese said. She said Hadley had built a ‘‘very capable’’ senior management team.
Reese said part of the decision-making around Hadley’s final date had been due to Hammond’s availability to step into the interim role. He’d already been contracting to the council and some of that work had been included in his responsibilities when he was employed as interim chief executive.
‘‘It’s fair to say that we’re heading in a new direction, and you’re going to see we’ve been working on a new vision and that’s required a set of skills that David has brought to us,’’ Reese said.
‘‘Clare created a really good platform for those next steps but we’d talked through where we wanted to go and Clare decided that she didn’t wish to continue in the role and I think having the opportunity to have David come in over this period, it’s given us that skill set, that ability to lead the long-term plan work, and I think that’s got us into a very good position.’’
Included in the severance summary section of the annual report is a more than $90,000 payment to a staff member. A council officer said this was a redundancy payment, but didn’t not specify what role it related to.