David Thorton Comments on the Current Situation Around Council and High End Labour Costs
From David Thorton (all references, rights and credits to David Thorton)
Auckland Council salaries – my thoughts.
The news that Auckland Council Chief Executive, Doug McKay, is paid an annual salary of $750,000 should not come as a surprise.
Mr McKay is responsible for managing a staff of 8,000, including the Council Controlled Organisations [CCOs], and a capital and operating budget of well over $3 billion.
However the report that 1,165 staff are paid $100,000 is surprising as that represents 14% of the total of 8,000 employees. These salary figures are directly related to the sheer size of the organisation, the largest local authority in the Southern Hemisphere, and larger than any local authority in Europe, and possibly any country which operates on the English style of local councils.
That size has presented a real problem for the Mayor and Councillors, none of whom had any experience of governance of such a huge organisation.
This was a significant challenge facing newly elected members and it must be said that this first Council has failed to meet that challenge.
The record of political decision-making during these first two years has provoked strong anti-council feelings among ratepayers and residents.
The root of the problem is that too much political decision-making power has been placed in too few hands, The Chief Executive is paid to manage the organisation, which, in my experience is functioning reasonably well in terms of the mechanisms required for such a large organisation.But the political representation needs an urgent review, particularly in respect of the ability of ratepayers and residents to influence decision-making.
A stronger representative structure, with more control passing down to purely local levels, would start to put the ‘local’ back into local government.
And bringing back some of the CCOs under direct council control should reduce the number of six-figure salary earners.-ends-
And as my first piece of “policy” I am setting about research in the feasibility of resetting funding back towards Local Boards to adequately fund community services, advocacy and capital projects. Using a particular Local Board as an example, the community inside that Local Board’s jurisdiction pay $106 million in rates to Auckland Council but only get 10% (if that back) per year to fund those “community services, advocacy and capital projects.” I believe control needs to come back to the local level away from the disconnected central body (Council and the Bureaucracy) thus between 25-33% of all rates revenue from a Local Board’s ratepayers should come straight back to the Local Board for those “community services, advocacy and capital projects.” Why? Because Local Boards are more accessible and responsive to the needs of their communities than the central body of Council and the bureaucracy ever could. And yes that means shifting some of the “responsibilities” over to Local Boards away from the central body. But proper resources and staff (that Boards do not have) would and should be able to handle this move.
So time for some research on the above policy. If it is feasible then we run with it and advocate strongly to Auckland Council, if non-feasible then back to the drawing board. But in any case I am putting the above policy out there for consideration and dialogue (leave comments below).
I will continue to develop ideas and write commentary as we progress to 2013 and the Local Government Elections. Dialogue and constructive comments are welcome as always.
BEN ROSS : AUCKLAND
Shining The Light –
To a Better Auckland
Auckland 2013: YOUR CITY – YOUR CALL
Putting Local back into Local Gevernment is a good idea, but you are on a knife edge in defining what is local and what might be regional.
There was probably no need for the amalgamation in the first place if we go back to Local Boards having local control.
That same level of Local / Regional control could have been in existance by the use of the Auckland Regional Authority of old and the many councils before amalgamation.
But there was undoubtably a need to streamline activities in some smail areas and to break up the larger ones. Wards were attempting to achieve that. But wards of old had the same outcasting from the central control. Remember the Community Committee idea set up by Robbie
You sure need to do a lot of research to find the answer to this problem.
CRD
And sitting on the knife edge is nothing rather unusual for me in some aspects.
But then again the post did its purpose and started a dialogue both here with your comment and other comments popping up in Facebook and emails.
Yes I sure do need to do a lot of research – that is a given that I will admit straight away but again at least the dialogue has started.