Guest Post by John Davey
Councils across New Zealand are telling a familiar story. There is not enough money. Rates must rise. Tracks cannot be maintained. Toilets are closed. River access points are removed. Environmental enforcement is scaled back. Recreation is described as “nice to have” rather than essential.
At the same time, new figures show councillor and mayoral pay rising well above inflation in many districts - in some cases by margins that ratepayers can only dream of matching in their own incomes.
This is not an article about envy or personal pay packets. It is about credibility, priorities, and trust.
If councils truly face a fiscal crisis, why are automatic pay increases treated as untouchable?
If ratepayers are being asked to tighten belts, why are internal costs structurally protected?
And when councils say they “cannot afford” access, environmental protection, or recreation infrastructure, what exactly does that mean?
Councils often explain access loss as a budget necessity. River margins become unsafe. Tracks deteriorate. Campgrounds are closed or restricted. Enforcement is said to be too expensive. Maintenance is deferred “until funding allows”.
Yet remuneration frameworks continue regardless of outcomes. Pay is not tied to environmental performance, access retention, or public satisfaction. It is indexed, adjusted, and applied even as councils acknowledge declining service levels.
Is that really unavoidable - or just convenient?
For groups like CORANZ, the concern is not how much councillors earn, but what councils choose to protect first when money is tight. Recreation and access are consistently treated as discretionary. Roads, pipes, compliance, and internal governance costs are treated as core. The result is predictable: access erodes quietly while councils insist there was no alternative.
Is outdoor access really less essential than everything else - or simply less politically risky to cut?
There is also a wider governance question. Councils frequently say they cannot afford proactive environmental work. Forestry slash is dealt with after storms rather than prevented. River health declines while monitoring is trimmed. Freedom camping is restricted because nuanced management is “too costly”. Yet the same councils accept remuneration increases without public debate.
What message does that send to ratepayers being asked to accept less?
Public trust depends on alignment between words and actions. When councils tell communities there is no money for basic outdoor infrastructure, but simultaneously accept above-inflation pay increases, that alignment frays. Even if remuneration decisions are technically independent, the perception remains - and perception matters.
It also feeds a deeper frustration. Many of the costs councils say they cannot meet relate to public goods: access, environmental protection, recreation spaces that support wellbeing, tourism, and community life. When these are sacrificed first, people begin to wonder whose interests are being prioritised.
Are councils managing decline - or managing optics?
This matters because access is rarely lost in one dramatic decision. It is lost through a series of small, defensible cuts. A track not maintained this year. A toilet removed next year. A river access point quietly fenced off. Each justified as temporary. Each explained as unavoidable. Each rarely reversed.
Meanwhile, internal systems continue uninterrupted.
No one is suggesting councillors should work for free. The question is whether councils should have the option - or the expectation - to demonstrate restraint when asking ratepayers to absorb significant increases and accept reduced services.
If councils can choose where to spend, why is remuneration so often excluded from scrutiny?
If councils say performance matters, why is pay so disconnected from outcomes?
If councils insist access must be cut because of cost, why are other costs treated as fixed?
These are governance questions, not ideological ones.
For CORANZ, the relevance is clear. Access, recreation, and environmental protection depend on councils making conscious choices. When councils claim they have no choice, it is reasonable to ask whether that claim holds across all areas - or only the ones easiest to cut.
If the outdoors continues to lose ground while internal costs rise automatically, the issue is not money alone. It is priority.
And once access is gone, no pay adjustment will bring it back.
Councils are what you get when you vote for muppets – a chaotic vaudeville show. Same goes for Fish and Game councils
Having invested a considerable amount of time interacting with the Canterbury Regional Council, (ECan), I have difficulty with this “dog whistle” CORANZ article that fails to appreciate what the RMA reforms will do to local democracy.
I don’t like ECan for its failure to manage my region’s land and water, especially in light of our declared Nitrate Emergency, but I am able to differentiate an undemocratic ECan run by government appointed commissioners appointed with the sole purpose of irrigating 850,000 ha of Canterbury in response to the 2008 Financial Crisis and to hell with the consequences, and the present fully elected ECan that has had the grace to acknowledge the mess created by those who have preceded them.
Don’t be fooled by the government’s actions to take away this critical element of local democracy in the name of “property rights” and “unlocking the economy” when they are unilaterally handing back control of the regions freshwater to “water user” District Councils. This rural based mega council will be restricted to simply implementing The Minister’s National Policy Statements in lieu of managing local consents.
The cornerstone of getting the Canterbury Water Management accepted by farmers was the undertaking that the “user-pays” principle would not apply to diffuse farm pollution sweetened by a $443 million dollar government subsidy (in 2009 value dollars).
I for one do not a repeat of this form of undemocratic and economically inequitable politics.
What pathetic excuses councils come up with. They should stoop spending on vanity projects. A friend in Blenheim told me Marlborough District Council spent $300,000 on a bus shelter at Picton. Another bus shelter at Blenheim had a hole in the roof to appease “Maori” ideology of Wairau meaning ‘hole in the sky.’
Don’t start me on nelson city council “lead” by failed ;politician Nick Smith.
There’s been a number of cases where Councils have recorded funding from TIF to build facilities for freedom campers and have done so, only to close them down shortly after due to complaints from a minority of residents..
Future funding should be issued only with refund clauses over 10 -12? years.
It’s tax payer money and we demand and expect accountability
Yes it’s greed. Funny peculiar thing, politicians are all ears before an election with promises to buck the corrupted system. When they get elected they fall into line.
They don’t have to take a salary rise; they can refuse it or better still donate it to the local Hospice or similar charity.
The rise in bureaucrats employed is great. A flaw in the “system” is that CEOs in local bodies have the sole power to hire and fire. The decisions on staffing are taken away from the elected councils.
Managers are paid roughly in line with staff numbers responsible for. More staff, higher the salary.
It’s “follow the money trail”.