City manager gets 15pc salary boost

Manukau City Council's top official has received a pay rise of nearly 15 per cent, taking his salary package - excluding superannuation - to $286,345.

City manager Colin Dale has about a year to go in the job, something the councillors reviewing his pay took into account.

The size of Manukau, the country's third biggest city after Auckland and Christchurch, was another factor.

"It is our belief that the remuneration for the new city manager, if we are to attract the right person, needs to be at a competitive salary," the Mayor of Manukau, Sir Barry Curtis, said last night.

He said that all things considered the council was comfortable with the process of setting Mr Dale's pay and how it compared with other council chief executives in New Zealand.

Bryan Taylor, the outgoing chief executive of the country's largest city council, Auckland, gets a package worth about $350,000.

But not all Manukau councillors are happy.

Howick councillor Jami-Lee Ross released details of Mr Dale's previously confidential pay package in his monthly Ross Report newsletter on council matters, saying the increase of more than $36,000 was contentious after the fallout from the council building consent audit of late last year.

When details of the audit were released Mr Dale faced censure but the moves were defeated.

Mr Ross said Mr Dale was the only council officer solely accountable to elected members and was responsible for a full-time-equivalent staff of about 1000.

But he said not all councillors had an automatic right to be involved in making decisions on Mr Dale's employment and remuneration.

That job fell to a four-member executive review panel made up of Sir Barry, Deputy Mayor Anne Candy and councillors Neil Morrison and Bob Wichman.

Mr Ross said because of Mr Dale's impending retirement it was time to open up the panel to more, if not all, councillors. "Every councillor should be involved. Otherwise we are just rubber-stampers."