Briggs pushed on savings
The squeeze is on Hamilton City Council’s chief executive to find $83 million in savings over the next decade.
Richard Briggs had already been pushed to save $55m over that period before Thursday’s long-term plan deliberation meeting.
Councillors stepped up the challenge by supporting a Cr Dave Macpherson plan, which added $28m to the expected savings total.
‘‘If this goes through, next time I might have to actually vote for the chief executive’s salary increase,’’ Macpherson joked.
Ratepayers said again and again in submissions that council should cut costs, he said, and that’s what his motion was about.
Expected savings will now be $6m in
2019/20 and another $1m will be added each year until 2023/24, when the savings hit $10m.
They can’t be one-offs, either, as Briggs is expected to maintain that $10m savings out to 2027/28.
Councillors were told the change would shrink the required rates increase slightly and gain council about $38m in debt capacity.
That was alluring, Cr Paula Southgate said, but she wanted to know the effect on staff jobs, levels of service and city projects.
She was one of several councillors who asked Briggs whether he could really save so much, adding she’d been told council was ‘‘so lean we squeak’’.
Saving that much would be a challenge, Briggs said, but he was up for it.
If it looked like it wouldn’t happen, he would alert council early.
‘‘There’s no tea or coffee any more,’’ he quipped as councillors went for their break after the vote.
Macpherson’s move was a chance for Briggs to have a radical look at how council does things, Cr Geoff Taylor said.
It would be a massive effort and all the more challenging because councillors were giving Briggs less money to do it with.
Macpherson’s motion also stripped
$2m in funding from a project Briggs was planning to help find savings.
‘‘Isn’t it great to have a chief executive who’s up for the challenge?’’ Deputy Mayor Martin Gallagher said.
But the plan didn’t make sense to Cr Angela O’Leary.
‘‘If you can find savings, they should have been found during the process,’’ she said.
‘‘They should have been presented to our residents because, if they had, we might have had a more palatable rates increase.’’
Councillors voted 10-2 for the increased savings, with Crs Siggi Henry and O’Leary in opposition.
Cr Garry Mallett had left the meeting before the vote.
Earlier in the day, almost $1.4m in extra funding for Mayor Andrew King’s red tape review made it through debate.
King argued it was the council’s biggest chance to streamline its processes and benefit both council and developers.
He said council staffers working on the project – officially known as the Regulatory Efficiency and Effectiveness Programme – worry about their jobs each time it comes back to council.
But O’Leary said King is the one who keeps bringing it back, including in cases where he has lost support for it.
Council can improve processes without a specific project, she said, and she couldn’t support ‘‘spending large buckets of money’’ to save money.
Councillors voted 8-5 to fund the red tape review.
Opposed were: Crs Henry, O’Leary, Rob Pascoe, Southgate, and Leo Tooman.
‘‘They should have been presented to our residents because, if they had, we might have had a more palatable rates increase.’’
Angela O’Leary