Tauranga Ratepayers’ Alliance reveals Council’s continued blowout on personnel costs

The Tauranga Ratepayers’ Alliance is exposing plans that will see the cost of consultants and contractors employed by Tauranga City Council skyrocket from $16.5 million last year to $23.3 million this year. Commenting on the information – released to the Ratepayers’ Alliance under official information law – Ratepayers’ Alliance spokesman Matthew Gill said:

“This is yet another burden on ratepayers who are already footing the huge increase in Council staff salaries from $66.3 to $80.5 million this year.”

“It was particularly misleading of Commissioner Stephen Selwood to earlier defend skyrocketing Council staff salaries by suggesting this would avoid contractor costs when, at the very same time, he and his colleagues were approving a massive increase in contractor and consultant costs in the draft budget.”

“Residents expected that Commissioners would work toward a more effective and efficient Council, but instead the opposite is happening. We’re witnessing a blowout in both the size of the Council bureaucracy and the consultants that make a living from it.”