City rates will rise to cover wage increases

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 9

City rates will rise to cover wage increases

Recent pay increases have increased the Christchurch City Council’s wage and salary bill by $5.27 million, and this must be recovered in rates and subsidies.

The council’s spending will exceed the 1985-86 budget by $2 million because of the pay increases.

While some of the $5.27 million would be recovered from Government subsidies, most would have to come from rates, the council’s policy and finance committee was told yesterday. Cr Maurice Carter said the increased wage and salary bill would push rates up significantly. Much of the blame lay with pay rates set by the Higher Salaries Commission.

“Somebody has got to react to these sorts of increases,” he said. The council’s biggestspending department, works and traffic, is likely

to ovespend its budget by about $277,000 because of pay increases, in spite of predictions that it could .stay within budget forecasts.

The deputy genereal manager (works), Mr Harold Surtees, said budget over-runs were more likely to result from bad weather when machinery would be idle than from over-expenditure on wages. Cr Vicki Buck said that the council should closely examine the matter of setting pay rates.

“We should look at what sort of salaries we are prepared to pay, and what sort of rates people are prepared to tolerate,” she said.

Staff had their pay linked directly to State servants in some ways, but a long-service bonus payment scheme was an “extra” available only to council staff.

“There is a need to get the pay fixing system

sorted out,” said Cr Buck. P.E.P.

the phasing out of P.E.P. schemes would threaten some of the council’s employment programmes unless alternative funding could be found, said the committee’s chairman, Cr Matthew Glubb.

“Only a certain amount of money will be available from rates,” he said. Cr Alex Clark said a block grant of $2O million to the Internal Affairs Department and the Forestry Service to continue job schemes would not go far. A genuine alternative was needed, he said.

The Government in December announced the phasing out of P.E.P. schemes. Cr Buck said that while the P.E.P. schemes were not the best answer to unemployment, they had given many people a good start.

The future of the council’s small business training scheme and the nursery factory would be threatened, she said. Peruvian gold The committee agreed in principle to spend $130,425 to bring the Ora del Peru exhibition to the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in June.

However, councillors were concerned that the council would pay more than its share to bring the exhibition to New Zealand. The exhibition will run for 42 days in Auckland and 35 days in Christchurch, although both galleries are paying the same amount to bring the exhibition from Peru.

The gallery’s director, Mr John Coley, will negotiate with representatives from the National Art Gallery to try to get the cost of the exhibition spread more evenly.