The Queenstown Lakes District Council will be asked to approve annual salaries for the Mayor and other elected representatives at its meeting in Queenstown tomorrow.
The report, prepared by QLDC deputy chief executive and finance manager Stewart Burns, said the Remuneration Authority - formerly the Higher Salaries Commission - has assumed the responsibility for determination of remuneration under the Local Government Act 2002.
A new remuneration framework was presented in 2002, the key feature of which was the provision of an indicative pool of remuneration for each local authority, based on statistical measures common to each.
Those measures included asset values, operating expenditure, population, geographic area and ‘‘rate of change'' factor.
The framework also included guidance as to how the pool could be allocated to the various types of elected members - the mayor or regional chair, committee chair, councillor, community board chair and community board member.
Mr Burns said the total pool for the 2008-09 year was $426,486, up from $416,507 in 2007-08, and the total of all payments to all elected members could not exceed that sum.
The only adjustment allowed was in remuneration for attendance at resource consent hearings, in which case the Remuneration Authority suggested payment at the rate of $68 an hour for time spent at a hearing.
Half of the salaries paid to elected members of the community board would also be excluded from the pool.
Mr Burns said the council's job was to confirm to the authority how it intended to allocate the pool for the next year - the proposed allocation would see an evenly applied increase of about 2.4% for all positions.
The recommendation to be considered at tomorrow's council meeting suggests Mayor Clive Geddes' salary increase from $79,656 to $81,472 (set by the Remuneration Authority), with chairs of standing committees and councillor/ community board chair to receive $36,117, up from $35,262.
Other councillors are recommended to receive a pay rise of just over $600 a year, from $25,645 to $26,267, while the recommended increase for a community board member appointed to a standing committee is from $16,157 to $16,548.
