While he was not employed for the full financial year covered by the report, the 10-month salary he received was comparable with the $262,575 full-year remuneration paid to former council chief executive Neil Taylor during the previous financial year.
Under the Local Government Act, councils can either re-appoint a first-term CEO for up to two years or conduct a full recruitment process and then make an appointment for up to five years.
Before re-appointing a first-term CEO, the council must, in the year before the contract expires, carry out a performance review looking at issues including "the mix of skills and attributes possessed by the chief executive, and the degree to which they are consistent with the skills and attributes that the local authority considers necessary for the future".
Mr Dalton said the council's decision to give Mr Jack a 1.8 per cent pay rise - believed to have been made at a closed-door meeting last month - arose from an assessment of his performance review.
The Local Government Commission this week released a "position paper" setting out an update on its proposal that Hawke's Bay's five local authorities be merged into a single council.
According to a timeline set out in the paper, if amalgamation were to proceed the new single Hawke's Bay Council would come into existence on November 1, 2016.
Asked if the possibility of amalgamation had been dealt with when the council considered the length of Mr Jack's new contract, Mr Dalton said he would not provide any details before it was signed other than to say the council had "acted prudently and certainly within the Local Government Act" in what it had offered its CEO.
"We are going to offer the chief executive a contract that we think is entirely appropriate," he said. "That's the reason we have public-excluded meetings. When we are negotiating things like people's salary packages, we do that in a public-excluded basis out of respect for the person concerned."
