Tauranga City councillor Matt Cowley's column in The Weekend Sun on May 29 states it's cowardly for people, namely former councillors, to make submissions requesting council cut staff numbers.

Well I have steadfastly maintained for five years that council staff numbers need addressing. Councillor Cowley should identify and spell out who the former councillors are supporting my views as I'd be very interested to know.

TCC's annual wage bill is about $38 million or about 32 per cent of rating income. It should be 22 per cent and on this basis alone staff levels of about 550 should be reduced to 380. At $70,000 per head this saves $12 million per annum. In addition Council Controlled Organisations and CityCare have many hundreds more staff plus consultants.
Undertake a robust totally independent audit of staff and systems; then put in place a staff sinking lid policy. Although this was partially undertaken in 2011 with 40 redundancies, the process was hijacked and staff numbers ballooned out.

Management is top heavy with a 1:4 ratio when should be 1:10. If councillors and TCC administration are unwilling or incapable of organising such an audit, let me arrange this – I'm more than capable. Those that have the guts to speak out are not the cowards, it is councillors who lack fortitude to address this aberration thereby costing ratepayers millions of dollars. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas!

R Paterson, Mt Maunganui.

Cr Matt Cowley's response:

I appreciate Mr Paterson's frequent commentary over the many years. I do wish though, that given his proclaimed expertise, he compares apples with apples.

Some council staff are paid from user fees - I don't have the exact figures in time to respond to this letter. He is wrong to imply all staff are paid from rates.

For example, our consent officers are funded by user pays. I welcome people to read the May 2014 Finance and Risk Committee report stating 'the variance relating to contractors and consultants costs covering (staff) vacancies is reflected in other expenses being over budget".

Let's also not forget $30 million debt has been transferred to ratepayers because it was unable to be recovered from development contributions.

The new growth areas in Papamoa East will include billions of dollars of new infrastructure from both developers and council. '

Any sane person would welcome a relatively small investment in a talented staff team to reduce the chance of ratepayers taking on more unnecessary debt in the future.