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Revealed: The local council CEOs that are creaming it
Revealed: The local council CEOs that are creaming it
18 SEPTEMBER 2018
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CEOs at small councils are earning inordinately high salaries, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, as it releases information compiled for the recently-released Ratepayers’ Report, available at www.ratepayersreport.nz.
Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Westland District Council, despite being one of the very smallest councils in terms of population, has the country's tenth-highest earning CEO. Simon Bastion is paid $361,630, making him one of the country’s top-earning council chief executives. In fact, the per-ratepayer cost just to cover his salary is about $55. This is an unacceptable cost for a council that claims it needs handouts from central government to build basic infrastructure like public toilets.”
“Westland isn't the only small council rorting ratepayers with a city-sized CEO salary. Why on earth is the Far North District Council’s chief exec earning more than Wellington City’s? Likewise, it’s not clear why Nelson City Council, with just 21,511 ratepayers, needs the country's eighth-highest-earning council CEO.”
“The country's highest earning council CEO, and one of the country's top-earning bureaucrats full-stop, is Auckland Council’s Stephen Town, on a salary of $690,000. But to be fair, it’s a tiny cost on a per-ratepayer basis."
“In calling their bean counters 'CEOs', it’s clear that councils think of themselves as slick, quasi-corporate organisations. But unlike businesses, councils have the power to dig endlessly deep into people's pockets. This power should come with a sense of public service. It’s about time we scrapped the CEO title, and brought back more modestly-remunerated Town Clerks – public servants tasked with delivering basic services at a reasonable cost.”
The top ten highest-earning CEOs
at local councils, as revealed in Ratepayers’
Report, are as follows:
| Council | CEO Remuneration | Ratepayers | Cost per Ratepayer | Median House Value (2017) | Remuneration / House Value |
| Auckland Council | $690,000 | 592,864 | $1.16 | $1,228,005 | 0.56 |
| Christchurch City Council | $447,151 | 164,112 | $2.72 | $496,378 | 0.90 |
| Far North District Council | $445,000 | 37,642 | $11.82 | $408,416 | 1.09 |
| Wellington City Council | $416,160 | 77,802 | $5.35 | $726,902 | 0.57 |
| Palmerston North City Council | $405,043 | 32,810 | $12.35 | $357,752 | 1.13 |
| Hamilton City Council | $386,448 | 56,716 | $6.81 | $539,357 | 0.72 |
| Dunedin City Council | $384,447 | 55,238 | $6.96 | $373,371 | 1.03 |
| Nelson City Council | $371,669 | 21,511 | $17.28 | $532,120 | 0.70 |
| Hutt City Council | $370,836 | 39,187 | $9.46 | $509,860 | 0.73 |
| Westland District Council | $361,630 | 6,607* | $54.73 | $252,708 | 1.43 |
*Westland District Council refused to provide ratepayer numbers according to Ratepayers' Report's standard definition, so this figure has instead been taken straight from the Council's annual report.
"It is simply outrageous in many places in New Zealand, the highest paid job in the entire town is at the council."
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