Typo or too good to be true: Did Hamilton City Council lose only $22 in revenue due to Covid-19?

Whoops: Hamilton City Council is urgently reviewing its agenda which appears to have some hugely inaccurate figures. Photo / HCC

Hamilton City Council has either suffered a mere $22 revenue drop due to Covid-19 or the astonishingly small figure is among one of several glaringly obvious typos in a key council document to be used as a basis of some of its biggest decisions this year.

The council meets on Thursday to finalise what will stay in and out of the 20/21 annual plan and effectively set the rates for the next year.

But included in the error-riddled 88-page document sent to councillors on Saturday and published on the council's website Monday afternoon are some eye-raising figures.

When approached about the accuracy of the report on Tuesday afternoon, a council spokesperson said staff were revising the document and the new version would answer these questions.

The report's executive summary claims the "Back on Track" budget is a response to a mere $22 reduction in non-rates revenue.

The updated operating budget adjustments since June 10 result in a net
increase in the operating surplus of $3.133 million including an increase of a whopping $660,000 million for Metro Spatial Plan contributions.

Despite changes in projections, the council is still proposing a 3.8 per cent rates increase.

Finance committee chairman Rob Pascoe said he had already pointed out some of the omissions and basic errors.

Along with the obvious errors, he also raised concerns about $2 million being added to the budget for health and safety despite elected members knowing nothing about the request until last Friday. Figures had also been calculated incorrectly and didn't add up.

Pascoe said he did not feel elected members had enough time to read and digest reports so when they arrived with quite obvious errors there was a greater concern there were other mistake they may not have been able to detect in the short period of time.

"I just feel there's a need for some senior oversight for what ends up in staff reports," he said.

"You can pick up the million missing or the million that is there and shouldn't be there - they become quite obvious but it's what we don't pick up that becomes of greater concern."

Pascoe, the mayor and deputy mayor met with senior staff on Monday to make changes.

Mayor Paula Southgate said she would be asking the chief executive and staff to go through the document with a fine-tooth comb to check and double-check.

"It is disappointing to see errors however they occurred."

However, she added, it was also up elected members who also needed to pay attention to the detail and make sure they were confident the information staff were giving them was right and she was confident they had done this.

Deputy mayor Geoff Taylor put the errors down to the document being done in a rush and said staff had only a few days to complete the document as the public hearings only finished on Thursday.

He said a few councillors had already had a chuckle about the $660,000 million figure and didn't think a few typos - such as missing or adding the word million to two figures -would change their decisions as councillors "knew the material pretty well".

However, during the meeting he planned to challenge the proposed rates increase as he favoured a smaller reduction of 2.8 per cent and was against council adopting the living wage at this time.