ES salary talks over in mere minutes

It took just over three minutes for Environment Southland’s councillors to ratify their levels of pay at an extraordinary meeting yesterday.

There has been no increase in the funding pool to be divvied up among regional councillors. For the forthcoming year, the Remuneration Authority allocated a total of $555,828, which is unchanged from last year.

Chairman Nicol Horrell said the council had held a workshop on the topic last week and the meeting was a formal process.

Council remuneration is set by the Remuneration Authority under its Local Government Members (2022-23) Determination 2022.

The level of remuneration set for Horrell is $129,434, and the council has no influence over that level.

The meeting agenda said Horrell had indicated he would share some of his workload and appointments with a view to succession planning. When Horrell was reinstated as chairman at the council’s inaugural meeting, he indicated it would be his last term in the position.

Deputy chairman Jeremy McPhail, who also chairs the regional transport committee, would get $63,265 this year. Strategy and policy committee chairperson Lyndal Ludlow would get $58,746 as she would also be chairing the risk and assurance committee until an independent chairperson was recruited.

All other committee chairpersons would receive $54,227, and remuneration for other councillors would be $45,189.

The agenda said it was not appropriate to consider the number of meetings to be chaired by councillors as a determining factor, given that all are required to undertake additional work and responsibilities outside of attendance at the routinely scheduled meetings.