SALARY CUTS PROPOSED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 984, 29 May 1930, Page 12

SALARY CUTS PROPOSED

HIGHER PAID OFFICERS OF THE CITY EFFECT ON RATE BURDEN Among the economies in the administration of Auckland City. Cr. W. H. Murray will ask the City Council to investigate, is a proposal to reduce overhead charges by certain salary cuts. The councillor has given notice to move that a special committee, consisting of himself and Crs. Grey Campbell, B. L. Bagnall, G. K. Hutchison and J. R. Lundon, be set up to report in two months on the possibility of making '‘reasonable economies” in view of the rating burden on the people.

Cr. Murray has enumerated a number of items wherein he believes a saving can be made. The most interesting is a proposal to lop something off the salaries of officials who. he considers, are able to stand a cut. “The City Council is nothing more nor less than a commercial house and other businesses in the City are also feeling the pinch of liard times and are making economies,” Cr. Murray said today. He was not at all sure that ratepayers were getting 100 per cent, efficiency for 100 per cent, expenditure on the higher grade officers.

For the year ended March 31, 1929, the latest for which statistics are available, the pay of salaried officers cost ratepayers £62,313. This represents the remuneration of the professional and clerical staffs casual and permanent in all departments. During the period 222 officials were on the salary scale, but the average Is greatly below that figure, for in 1929 numerous assistants were engaged temporarily in compiling the rolls and carrying out the municipal election. Each year the treasurytakes on a number of casual men to help get out the rate demands. For the term under review, the wages hill, as opposed to the salaried list, totalled £307,660. This represented the pay of 1,072 men, a large proportion of which were classed

“casual.” Thus salaries and wages combined cost Auckland City £369,973 —approximately a-quartei- of the whole revenue. SALARIES IN DETAIL

From assistance given by the town clerk, Mr. J. S. Brigham, it is determined that three officials are receiving salaries of £I,OOO or more. They are the City Engineer. Mr. J. Tyler, the Town Clerk, and the City Treasurer, Mr. Andrew Messer, in that order. Other salaries, with the number of persons in receipt of them shown in parentheses, are as follow:-—£800 (2). £7OO (2). £650 (6). £6OO (2). £550 (2), £520 (1). £SOO (2). These 17 officers are together paid £14,220 each year. Salaries below £lO to £S a week run as follow: £435 (11). £4OO (4). These total £9,585. Therefore the aggregate annual salaries account from the highest paid official to those earning £S e, week involves £23,805. It is these that Cr. Murray proposes should be cut.

The councillor mentioned 10 per cent., but prefers to leave the question to the committee he has named. He admits that a salaries cut in itself could not make a material saving. On the 10 per cent, basis the salary list would only return £2,380, whereas in order to reduce the rates by one penny economies amounting to nearly £IO,OOO must be found. Even if the cut were exercised from the City Engineer to the lowest paid junior, a saving of only- £6,230 would result. Mr. Tyler saved the city a sum equal to more than two years of his salary when he reorganised the system of refuse collection,” remarked the Mayor, Mr. G. Baildon,-in talking this morning about economies generally. The Mayor added that as far as Mr. Brigham was concerned lie had many- times offset his salary by his knowledge of finance, which bad enabled him to effect advantageous negotiations saving the city large sums in interest and similar items. “My salary does not cost Auckland a penny piece—I would be ashamed if it did,” Mr. Brigham commented.

Asked whether it was possible economically to shorten the office staff in any department, the town clerk observed that no one could say that he had ever employed a superfluous man. On the contrary, he was invariablv a man short.