MAKING THE MOST OF LOCAL ELECTIONS

MAKING THE MOST OF LOCAL ELECTIONS

Voting in the Local Body Elections begins on Tuesday 9 September and carries on until Saturday 11 October 2025.

Now that all candidates wanting to contest the upcoming local body elections have been confirmed it is time we found out what they are proposing if they are elected.

Particularly what is their thinking in regard to our rates and whether they support a cap of some description on council rate charges? Currently most councils are in my opinion over staffed and this has come about through the gradual creep of social engineering into council planning and decision making.

Will they take a serious look at staff numbers and whether the councils could work with fewer staff? After all for most councils their biggest operating cost is the cost of staff remuneration. We should be asking the candidates whether they are prepared to actually cut staff numbers where they think it is possible and if they are not then we should seriously consider whether they get our vote or not.

Rates have risen significantly in recent times and most ratepayers are reaching the point where they cannot actually afford to pay any increases in rates and keep the roof over their heads. 

For many years now we have seen annual increases in council staff numbers across most councils and this seems to have accelerated as local bodies have been given more responsibility for issues that used to belong to Central Government. Many of these issues that have been devolved down to the local bodies from Central Government in a large part revolve around social engineering type issues and have taken some of the focus away from the core business that local bodies have always had, such as water, sewerage, rubbish disposal and local roading.

Back in the 1930’s after the great depression there began a push to amalgamate many of the small local authorities and do away with the duplication of roles and of departments.

There was a huge amalgamation of local authorities in October 1989 when 817 local authorities throughout the country were reduced to 86. This presented an opportunity for many of the amalgamated councils to reduce staff numbers and some of them acted on this.

One example of this happening was seen when Bruce Anderson, CEO of the amalgamated eleven local boroughs that formed the new Auckland City Council, reduced the total number of employees for the hugely expanded council to almost the same number that he’d previously needed to run the much smaller Auckland City Council. Ratepayers benefited from a more efficient council. Some staff retired, others took redundancy.

Unfortunately by the time we saw the next round of amalgamations in 2010, which formed the so-called Auckland Super City, the first two mayors seem to be totally unaware of the possibility of being able to slim down the bureaucracy or to trim staff numbers.

In effect what actually happened was that the staff of all of the amalgamated councils were absorbed into the new Super City structure even though many of their roles were duplicated throughout the eight contributing authorities. They still found new roles for those staff to fill and this was in a large part the reason for the huge increases in rates that have occurred since that amalgamation took place. 

We ended up with a large number of staff in positions that were mainly created to keep them in a job and this meant that they needed to find new functions for those staff to perform. And the council bureaucracy has been very successful in doing this and as such has created the need for much higher levels of rates income to fund these roles.

Much of the work these employees are now undertaking consist of permitting actions under the Resource Management Act and council planning rules and regulations. The fees for these permits that are now required to do just about anything on the ratepayer’s property, have risen steeply as have the numbers of staff involved in granting these permits.

Much of the spiralling cost has come about through the need to be able to fund those staff salaries.

As time has gone by we have seen the Auckland City Council become what is known as a Unitary Authority (a combination of Regional and City councils). Again this has further created need for more staff and we now see that the Super City has a huge number of staff who are being paid well above the average wages in the private sector for equivalent positions.

In my opinion it seems that as there become higher paid positions developed in councils they then contribute to an expansion of the lower paid staff numbers to justify their inflated salaries, which in turn becomes a vicious self-perpetuating cycle which continues to raise costs for the ratepayers without any appreciable increase in services.

I believe that it would be possible to significantly reduce the number of staff within the Auckland Super City and that this would only require more efficiency in the services provided rather than a cut to actual services.

Whilst I use the Auckland Super city as an example of how to get it wrong I am sure that there will be many other local bodies throughout New Zealand that are facing the same issues with the only differences being the scale of the problems they face.      

Central Government under Jacinda Ardern’s leadership increased the public service numbers by approximately 30%. In the year to 30 June 2017, the number of full time equivalent (FTE) employees in the Public Service was 47,252. As of March 2023, the total number of public servants was 62,710 people.

While the number of public servants continued to increase under her Labour Government, spending on consultants also grew to approximately $1.7 billion in 2022.

Even though we saw this increase in public service staff numbers on the state’s payroll, scarcely a soul noticed any significant improvement in government services.

The new coalition government that was elected in 2023 has not seriously reduced the public service numbers since they took office and we the ratepayers/taxpayers are still required to fund them.

Mayors and councillors are required to deliver quality services. Local and central government bureaucrats aren’t cheap. But, money wasted on surplus personnel is money not available for additional roads or footpaths, park maintenance, or maintenance or expansion of infrastructure.

As the candidates go around meeting the people and talking to various lobby groups & making promises, they need to be reminded that council staff numbers are the biggest single item on council budgets. They need to be advised that the voters want to keep as much money as possible in their own pockets rather than facing increased rates bills every year.

But we also need to be aware of what they are saying and check that it is actually correct. There have been many instances over the years where candidates have made statements leading up to elections, which while they have been true, they have actually been a convenient use of statistics to support their own viewpoint.

One example of this in the current electioneering cycle for the Waikato Regional Council is seen in the social media reporting of council spending on consultants in the 23/24 financial year, where it has been reported by the Rates Control Team of candidates that the Council spent $16.9 million on consultants.

The current Chairperson has then replied to that post (also on social media) quoting the Chief Executive as confirming that the actual figure was in fact $793,000, less than 5% of what the Rates Control Team had claimed, and also stating that misinformation does not serve the community, voters or democracy.

Also stated that claims like that highlight the damage caused when inaccurate numbers are presented as fact and that our community deserves open, transparent and accurate information so that people can have confidence in making informed choices as when groups promote misleading figures whether deliberately or by mistake, it undermines trust in democracy.

Healthy debate is vital in local elections but it must be grounded in truth. Exaggerated numbers and scare tactics don’t help our communities, they only breed mistrust.

Whilst the statement by the Chief Executive may be true in actual fact, there was a further post from another councillor clarifying the reason that the Rates Control Team stated the figure was $16.9 million was due to the council classifying many of the consultants they used throughout the financial year as in fact contractors even though they were consulting to council.

The Rates Control Team stated that they still considered them to be consultants and that they had a list of 161 individuals or companies that had been paid a total of $16.9 million and that the Chairperson had not told the electorate that the combined contractor and consultant spend for the 23/24 financial year was in fact $69 million.

Given the Chairperson’s exhortation to ensure that information is grounded in truth I have to say that I have seen the figures that were posted by the Rates Control Team and they were on an official council document which showed a far greater spend on consultants than the claimed $793,000.

This if nothing else just confirms that all voters need to ensure the information they are receiving from candidates is correct no matter who the candidate is. It is not only the inflation of figures that can undermine trust but also the use of intentionally deflated figures which can have the same effect.

We as ratepayers only get one chance every three years to influence how our rates are spent and we should make every effort to take that opportunity by seriously questioning all of the prospective candidates about their aims if elected, before making our decision on whom to vote for.