3 days ago
Wellington mayoral hopeful Ray Chung promises to slash council jobs
Photo:
Supplied / Facebook
Wellington mayoral hopeful Ray Chung wants to eliminate rates increases altogether by cutting costs - starting with council employees, despite an admission he does not know what "a lot of these people do".
Chung, councillor for Wharangi/Onslow-Western Ward after topping the ballot in the 2022 local elections, is running for mayor on the 'Independent Together' (IT) ticket. The frontrunner is likely former Labour leader Andrew Little, who has the backing of the city's outgoing Green-affiliated mayor, Tory Whanau.
Chung insists the city should steer clear of party politicians.
"I've never belonged to any political party, so I don't have any affiliation with any of the parties. I just think that we should be looking at things that make financial sense, make things that work for everyone."
IT's five key policies include having no party politics in local government.
"The media are very fond of saying that we're 'right' when we first announced IT. Even some of my colleagues came out and said that, 'Oh, we are a right-wing party,' but we aren't, and I don't even know what any of the people, any of the candidates that we actually have, I don't even know what their political affiliations are."
The party's headline policy was zero rates increases for three years - not zero after inflation, but zero at all - and after that only increase rate to match inflation. That was despite the city's
potential billion-dollar problems with its water infrastructure
and projected
double-digit increases for years to come
.
Asked on
Morning Report
on Friday if zero rates increases would mean cuts, Chung replied "absolutely". But when it came to what exactly would get the chop, he said "a good close look" at things that "aren't our core business" would be needed.
"The thing is, when cutting, when looking at cutting rates, the rate cuts have to come from [operating expenses]. They don't come from [capital expenditure] - a little bit comes from [capital expenditure], but very little…
"Anything that we need to borrow money for to actually build or to do, then that comes out of [capital expenditure]. So that doesn't affect your rates, except for the interest on the money that you're borrowing.
"So where the big cuts are coming is out of operating expenses. So we've got to take those out because they have a direct effect on rates. So these are the things that we're focusing on to try and get out."
Pressed further, he ruled out cuts to "core council activities" including "parks, swimming pools, libraries, community facilities". But said the size of the council's payroll was a problem.
"Our staff numbers have just gone up exponentially and really, I have no idea what a lot of these people do."
According to
Wellington City Council's latest annual report
, the headcount has actually been relatively flat over the last few years - 1970 in 2022, 2065 in 2023 and actually dropping to 1939 in 2024.
Each year, between a quarter and a third of employees were casual or part-time.
In 2017, the council had 1762 employees,
percent3D&keywords=2017&type=all&utm_source= its archives showed
.
Other pillars of IT's policy platform included scrapping "wasteful projects", reinstating "lost" carparks and increasing surveillance in the CBD to prevent anti-social behaviour.
At his own campaign launch, Little called Chung's campaign pitch of no rates increases
not credible
.
"I don't think that's at all credible, and I know look, I'm the first to say rate rises of 30 percent over two years is not acceptable. That's not credible either, and so the council has to be doing what it can to manage those rates rises."
Voting in this year's local elections begins in September.
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