Auckland Council’s new cost saving committee cancels first meeting - nothing to discuss

Chairman Maurice Williamson said the meeting was cancelled on Monday, on the grounds it didn’t have anything to discuss. Photo / File

Auckland Council’s new cost-saving committee has cancelled it’s first meeting - because there’s nothing to talk about.

Mayor Wayne Brown last week said council faces a $295 million hole in its next budget and double-digit rate rises as a result, if the deficit isn’t addressed.

The expenditure control and procurement committee was expected to meet on December 6. But chairman and former National MP Maurice Williamson said the meeting was cancelled on Monday, on the grounds it didn’t have anything to discuss.

Manurewa councillor Angela Dalton said it feels like committee members have been sidelined.

“The only communication I’ve received from Maurice Williamson was that the meeting had been cancelled. It’s unbelievable,” Dalton said. “It’s like the committee members aren’t even involved.”

It doesn’t make sense to cancel its first meeting on the grounds there’s nothing to talk about, Manurewa councillor Angela Dalton says. Photo / Dean Purcell

She said if the council is supposedly facing a financial crisis, it doesn’t make sense to cancel its first meeting on the grounds there’s nothing to talk about.

Dalton said the fact council will go into recess next month for Christmas - and won’t return until February 2023 - meant the committee was unlikely to meet more than twice before Williamson releases his findings.

But Williamson defended the decision to scrap next month’s meeting and said it was too soon to have any solid data or analysis for the committee to look at.

“It was my view that it’s best not to meet until we have something worth discussing,” he said.

Williamson said he is going through the council’s operations line-by-line looking for changes in revenue and expenditure, potential asset sales and is working to a deadline of March 31, 2023.

“This is a massive piece of work,” he said. “The short-term budgetary measures that need to be decided immediately are being driven by the mayor’s office.”

Williamson said that includes decisions on how to address the $295m deficit before Mayor Wayne Brown releases his draft budget next month.

“It’s not up to my committee to look at those issues,” he said.

But Williamson admitted some of the findings from his committee’s work could feed into the final budget before it is signed off in mid-2023.

“Wayne is fixing the hole in the bottom of the boat to stop the leak and my job is to get the boat into the dry dock and fix the hole so it doesn’t leak again.”

But Manukau ward councillor Alf Filipaina, who is also a member of the committee, said he still hasn’t seen terms of reference for the work.

“The only thing I have to reference at the moment is the mayor’s press release on November 17.”

He said the normal role of the now defunct finance and performance committee had been taken over by the governing body committee.

“So I don’t know exactly what the expenditure control and procurement committee has been established to do?”