Rising staff costs of near $1b will be big election issue, says councillor

Mr Brewer said 192 more staff earned more than $100,000. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Auckland Council's staffing and salary bill has grown steadily in the five years of the Super City and will be a big issue in next year's local body elections, says Councillor Cameron Brewer.

"Every year they climb despite all the assurances and excuses," said Mr Brewer, commenting on the council's draft annual report for the June year.

He said that during the 10-year budget debate he tried to get staff costs pegged for three years but was voted down. "Instead, council is now forecasting its in-house wage bill and salary costs to rise to nearly $1 billion in the coming years.

"Total annual staff costs have grown by $177 million to $792 million since 2011."

Mr Brewer said 192 more staff earned more than $100,000.

The council's acting chief financial officer, Matthew Walker, said that during the year the fulltime equivalent staff number increased by 208 to 9678 across all organisations in the council group.

This was to support Auckland's significant growth - 45,000 new residents in the year, in addition to the 35,000 new residents in the previous year.

Growth fed directly into council activities; for example, Auckland Transport added 116 fulltime staff to help with the roll-out of electric trains and the first full year of electronic ticketing.

The 6 per cent lift in construction activity needed 42 more fulltime equivalent staff to process more than 1100 more building consents.

Mr Walker said the fulltime equivalent staffing level was still 230 below the combined level of the eight former councils in the region in 2010.

Salary bills had gone up when different arms of the council decided to bring work in-house. An example was animal control where 48 fulltime equivalent staff were taken on and resulted in a saving of $800,000 a year to ratepayers.

Mr Walker said the focus on containing costs showed in the council's operating cash spend for the year on suppliers and employees.

This was within 1 per cent of the budget - coming in at $2.21 billion.