You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, with my electric back scratcher

When the council controversially approved a $68,000 pay rise for Marryatt in late 2011, it did so partly because of advice it received from consultancy company Strategic Pay, which argued that Marryatt’s salary, when benchmarked against others in the private and public sector, was too low.

When Strategic Pay presented that advice, it was being paid by Marryatt to do other council work.

Let’s get an “independent” body to determine my pay, whilst I also pay that “independent” body to do other work. Can’t see how that’s a conflict at all. Surprise surprise, they argue that I should have more money.

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The morning after the night before

So Tony Marryatt is on full pay whilst his role is being investigated. Around $1475 a day to play golf. Not only that, but Doug Martin, the man who is covering for him, will get paid $2000 a day. We are told that this is a “significant discount“. You can add another $2000-$2500 to that – the amount that Peter Winder is getting to run the investigation into the consenting crisis. 

By my rough calculations, that’s almost $6000 a day for one man (and the two men who we’ve had to bring in to tidy up after him).

The Marryatt Surprise

From the Press:

The communication breakdown comes on the back of a damning audit last year, after which Marryatt pledged to improve the information flow to elected members. A “no surprises” policy was also implemented.

If a letter threatening to remove the councils’ ability to issue building consents – probably it’s single most important role in the rebuild – wasn’t considered a surprise, I shudder to think where the threshold is.

Nice work if you can get it

More on the consenting issue at the council. I’ll try and look at the numbers behind it later on, though it seems that the numbers aren’t really the issue. From the Press:

High-ranking Christchurch City Council managers knew about the threat to revoke consenting power, but decided the situation was “being handled”.

It was revealed yesterday chief executive Tony Marryatt and democracy and regulatory services general manager Peter Mitchell both knew the International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) had given notice on May 30 of its intention to revoke the council’s accreditation as a consenting authority.

However, Mayor Bob Parker and councillors were not told.

So Marryatt got the letter, read it, and somehow came to the conclusion that no one else needed to know about it? Was he too busy thinking of a way to explain his job over on the board of the council’s insurance company? This guy gets paid more than half a million dollars a year, and yet seems to revel in his ability to completely useless at it. And Peter Mitchell, who has one of the most Orwellian job titles possible – democracy and regulatory services manager – decided that on this occasion, democracy was best managed by him not passing key information on to the councillors. I can see two explanations here; upon receiving the letter, Marryatt and Mitchell decided it wasn’t that important and didn’t need to be passed on – in which case they’re inept and should be sacked – or they knew the significance of the letter, and decided to not act on it – in which case they’re undermining the elected council and should be sacked.

The elected representatives may not get on with each other at the council, which isn’t ideal. But it’s hard to see how the councillors can get anything done, when the executive branch seems to have gone rogue, and taken the staff with them. This wouldn’t be ok at the best of times, but it is the last thing Christchurch needs right now.