Mayor takes responsibility for 'typo' that could have cost council $20m
Photo:
RNZ / Robin Martin
The mayor of New Plymouth has taken personal responsibility for a "typo" that could've cost his council $20 million in lost revenue.
At a meeting last month council passed a resolution saying rates figures in its annual plan were inclusive of GST, when they were actually exclusive of it.
It has had to quickly correct the error and apologise to ratepayers.
The council met at a hastily-organised extraordinary meeting to iron out its mistake this week.
Mayor Neil Holdom said the process to set rates was robust and compliant - but then the wheels fell off.
"In preparing the final report for adoption a member of the team pasted the GST exclusive numbers into the final report where all fees and charges were confirmed. They should have included the GST inclusive numbers."
The bungle could have been costly.
"If somebody took the council to court to seeking a judicial review of rates or charges the court would've identified the schedule was incorrect and the GST component which is about $20 million would not have been legally chargeable."
Acting council chief executive Sarah Downs admitted it was not a good look, but said there was ultimately no effect on rates, which were struck at 9.9 percent.
"It was a typographical error, so we asked for council under Section 46 of the Legislation Act to correct that error and as a result it's not impacting any rates whatsoever."
She was unsure how the mistake happened.
"We're not quite clear, but the team are investigating how the error was made. There is a level of people saying the correct checks were not put in place, so we're busy in the process of making sure what extra checks do we need to do."
Council staff were not the only people to miss the error - all 15 elected members overlooked it too.
Councillor and mayoral aspirant Sam Bennett - who spoke at the extraordinary meeting - had been doing some soul searching.
"As an elected member personally I was really disappointed in myself that that went under my filter, my radar and I'm thinking why did I miss that, why did not only I miss it but why did the 15 councillors who sit around the table miss something that's so significant."
Councillor Max Brough - who was not shy about taking the council to task over its spending - also had eyes for the mayoral chains.
He was less apologetic.
"I don't know how you'd pick it up. I've been thinking about that since this came to light and unless you've sat down and forensically analysed it all I don't think you'd pick it up.
"So, Audit New Zealand has done their job, audits kicked in and done its job. I'm pleased about that, but I'm sad they had to do that."
Holdom was happy to eat some humble pie.
"I wish to publicly apologise to the community for the administrative error. It is my responsibility as leader of council to ensure all information provided is accurate and measures are in place to test and verify that information and that standard has not been met in this case.
"I wish to ensure the community that I take the matter very seriously and steps are being put in place to rectify the issue and ensure it does not happen again."
This was not the first time a "typo" had landed the council in trouble.
In 2015
, it printed about 2 million rubbish bags with the phone number of a local Thai restaurant on them - rather than its own.
The bungle resulted in restaurant staff fielding a flood of calls about the bags rather than taking bookings and takeout orders.
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