A Mackenzie councillor has questioned the need to hire a handful of support roles, accusing the organisation of engaging in “empire building”.
By Claire Taylor of Local Democracy Reporting
Several governance and support roles were put on hold last year while councillors reviewed 2026 budgets.
At last week’s extraordinary council meeting, councillors were asked to sign off on a handful of roles.
Five roles were proposed, with four considered a priority: a part-time health and safety partner, a part-time customer services officer, a governance executive support role, and a finance officer role.
The fifth role was for an economic development officer.
Pukaki ward councillor Frank Hocken strongly opposed hiring a health and safety partner and customer services officer, saying the council already had two staff in customer service roles.
"I sometimes wonder what two do in this building, sitting in their ... cage, as I like to call it," Hocken said.
"They’re not answering the phone or anything, so I think we can cut costs there."
Hocken said he felt the council’s health and safety was "overdone" and it should be the individual contractors' responsibility to keep themselves safe.
"All the contractors that come and work for councils ... would have their own health and safety and you don’t need to check it," he said.
"You’re just making a mountain out of a molehill."
He claimed the council was engaging in "empire building" by filling the health and safety role.
'In the dark'
Pukaki ward councillor Jan Spriggs agreed with Hocken, saying there were few high-risk activities to manage and she would prefer the health and safety role hours be reduced before it was advertised.
Council chief executive officer Angela Oosthuizen countered their comments, saying there were several serious health and safety risks for workers in the district.
"Our biggest risks are around the contract, the operations area, and the regulatory space. We have a lot of lone workers, workers that go out and do regulatory functions, often at early hours."
Oosthuizen said the council needed to ensure contractors were accredited and followed correct procedures.
"We have an obligation under the Health and Safety at Work Act to make sure our employees go home safely with no harm."
Mayor Scott Aronsen agreed, saying while there was some work to do in the area, the health and safety of staff could not be understated.
"If we don’t have our SOPs (standard operating procedures) in line, then we could find ourselves in serious trouble."
In 2023, statistics showed a high number of workplace injuries reported in Mackenzie, with more than 480 claims lodged with ACC.
The council’s general manager of people, customer and cultural relationships, Alexis Kereikeepa, said the health and safety role would provide expertise to the council.
"Without that resource, you do not have the technical expertise nor the subject matter expertise in health and safety.
"Without being able to monitor and mitigate our ongoing risks ... you’re kind of in the dark."
Significant deficits in council's health and safety operations
Kereikeepa said a SiteSafe audit five years ago revealed significant deficits in health and safety operations, stating they’d worked to get these up to speed.
"We were behind on all eight modules."
The role would oversee policies and procedures, ensure compliance and training, conduct inspections and hazard assessments, lead incident investigations, and support and report to council.
Kereikeepa said the council could face significant fines or find itself in breach of the law without someone in the role.
The Health and Safety at Work Act states that inadequate delegation, or a lack of appropriate expertise, could result in legal breaches, with penalties of up to $500,000 for basic offences and up to $1.5 million if serious injury or death occurs.
Individual council officers could also face up to five years’ imprisonment, depending on the severity of the breach.
The role of the proposed governance executive role included responsibility for meeting minutes, reports, managing general managers’ schedules, organising travel and purchasing, collating documents, and providing governance support to the council.
Oosthuizen said due to the council increasing its governance structure and meeting frequency, there was additional compliance to ensure accurate recording of meetings.
"There is also a vast array of administrative support that gets provided to the GMs [general managers] and it’s not a good use of their time to be sitting and doing diary management, travel bookings, management of invoices to contracts."
The customer service role was expected to handle enquiries, customer support, and land information memorandums.
The financial officer would support creditors and payroll, and assist across rates, billing, fleet operations, accounting functions, and debt management.
Councillors voted to implement the four roles, with Hocken opposing the health and safety partner and customer services role. The scope of the proposed economic development officer role would be reworked.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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