Briggs feels the heat on rates
Hamilton City Council is being urged to set up an independent panel to unpick the work of its chief executive.
Public angst has grown following the release of the council’s draft long-term plan and its proposal to hike rates 19 per cent over two years.
Former Hamilton deputy mayor Gordon Chesterman said the state of the council’s coffers has alarmed many residents.
But the man at the centre of the council’s financial firestorm - chief executive Richard Briggs - said a host of independent experts had checked his figures.
Chesterman said when he retired from politics in October 2016, the council’s finances appeared to be in good shape.
A 2016 pre-election report confirmed this view.
And Briggs said at the time that the council’s financial position had strengthened over the previous three years.
‘‘Just months later, Richard [Briggs] then says the council hasn’t been balancing its books and the city is living beyond its means,’’ Chesterman said.
Council staff have said that driving the need for the major rates hike is higherthan-expected population growth, increasing compliance costs, and an under-investment in council assets during the past six years.
Briggs said he’s ‘‘completely comfortable’’ since about 20 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) accountants have looked over his work on city finances.
He stands by his pre-election report, saying it wasn’t the place to report his hunch the council’s budgets were too tight.
Asked if he should have shared his concerns over the city’s finances sooner, Briggs said he needed the data to back up his gut feeling.
Asked if councillors should have had the financial information sooner, Briggs said he got it as fast as possible.
‘‘It’s a big call and I wanted to make sure that if I stood up and said we needed to put rates up, that I could actually have the evidence to do it,’’ he said.
‘‘If I had gone to the public and said, look, our rates are too low ... and I didn’t have all the information, I would have been shot down.’’
In 2015, the last time council made a long-term plan, councillors told staff to go back and cut costs, Briggs said.