Numbers game
Mayoral candidates debate NPDC staff levels as election deadline looms
With little more than a fortnight to go before the local body elections close, the race to be New Plymouth’s next mayor has stepped up a gear, and two frontline rivals have found common ground on the subject of council staffing.
Sitting mayor Neil Holdom and councillor Sam Bennett came out strongly in defence of the number of staff the council employs when questioned at a packed meet the candidates’ evening organised by New Plymouth West Rotary.
Council staffing has become part of candidate and councillor Murray Chong’s mayoral campaign. He claims levels have ballooned to 800 in the last six years, a figure not matched in an official release by NPDC, which said there were 644 permanent staff, made up of 464 full-timers and 180 part-time workers.
‘‘It seems that with too many staff and departments the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing any more,’’ Chong said at Tuesday’s meeting, held at the New Plymouth Club.
‘‘I say we need to seriously look at all staffing numbers and PR team numbers and what they actually do, because it is simply not working.’’
When questioned about his claim, which he said equated to a 60% increase over that six-year period, Chong said he was told there were 800 staff employed by former chief executive Craig Stevenson during a council workshop. Chong had no other evidence to back up his figures.
Holdom told the meeting that when he came into the job in 2016 there was an extremely limited engineering and project management team because those roles had all been outsourced to consultants. There were also no maintenance or inspection teams
‘‘I say we need to seriously look at all staffing numbers and PR team numbers.’’
Murray Chong
because the jobs had been cut to save money.
‘‘I asked if we could see our [underground] assets and was told we couldn’t because we had stopped looking at them and maintaining them,’’ he said.
‘‘We have hired engineers, and we have hired project managers, and we have been investing and doing the maintenance, doing the inspections to understand the work that needs to be done.’’
He said the council did not now need to bring in additional staff because the organisation had stabilised the cuts that had been made previously.
‘‘The reality is, if we want to look after our assets we need engineers, we need people doing maintenance, and we need people doing inspections because that is our core business.’’
That also meant not ‘‘kicking the can down the roads to our kids’’.
When faced with a similar question, Bennett, who last week accused Holdom of spending too much time in Wellington, also went into bat for the number of council staff employed.
‘‘They are not paid the big dollars,’’ he said. ‘‘These are engineers who are not paid a lot of money, who are doing things in our community that will be in our ground for 100 years.
‘‘So when it comes to staff I will always support the CEO to make sure that we are fully resourced to do the work we need to do.’’
Yesterday, councillor and fellow candidate Dinnie Moeahu said if the community wanted job cuts then they would also have to decide what services they no longer wanted. He also pointed out that if the Government’s Three Waters mandates were introduced, the council would lose up to 20% of its staff.
Meanwhile, Greg Mackay, who is making a second run at the mayoralty, used the meeting to tear up – for the second time in a week – a copy of the longterm council plan that actually includes many of the infrastructure items he is demanding. They include upgrades to the Urenui sewers and Waitara stormwater system, part of a $248 million water improvement package the council has agreed.
First-time candidate Peter Hardgrave put a chain around his neck, pulled it apart and then pretended to be hand tied by it before walking continuously around in a circle waving goodbye to Holdom. Then he outlined the three things he was unhappy about.
‘‘The poisoning of our water with fluoride, water metres and the biggest one of all, Three Waters,’’ he said.
He also went on to describe attaching water meters to broken infrastructure as like putting lipstick on a pig, calling it a pure ‘‘money grabbing’’ exercise by the council. Hardgrave also claimed the ‘‘dismissal’’ of Stevenson as chief executive was because of a conflict of interest with council contractors. Stevenson resigned in July after a complaint was made against him.
Fellow first-time candidate Shaun Clare continued to advocate the establishment of a fundraising committee that would decide which projects, apart from infrastructure, would be paid for by ratepayers.
‘‘It will be so the poor people and those who are not as fortunate as everyone else can still afford their rates,’’ he said. ‘‘We will use our facilities, our parks and all the event centres that we have, and we will raise money.’’
Another newcomer, Murray ‘‘Muzz’’ Mcdowell, was allowed to speak on Tuesday after being excluded from last week’s Positive Ageing candidates meeting. He told the crowd he had given up narcotics in 2019 and subsequently alcohol as he focused on his mayoral campaign.
‘‘I’m keeping things simple,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m not telling you who to vote for, it’s entirely up to you, it’s your decision.’’
Mcdowell’s solution to lowering rates was to use the council’s perpetual investment fund, although just how much he would take out was not mentioned.
Taranaki Daily News’ mayoral candidate debate takes place tomorrow in the New Plymouth District Council Chambers. Doors open 10am, debate starts 10.30am.