The staffing section was not included in the quarterly monitoring report, which breaks down council's financial position. Cr Curach pointed out the staffing information was missing and asked council staff if "that was going to be ongoing or a one-off departure?"
Council staff told Cr Curach the section had not been printed and that council did not generally publicly report staff numbers or wage costs. Cr Curach said the information needed to be public and should not be "kept hidden within council".
"The ratepayers have a right to know what our HR [human resources] spend is and how many staff there are," he told the meeting."
Council organisational services general manager Jaine Lovell-Gadd told the Bay of Plenty Times the staffing report would be made public every quarter, after the Cr Curach's request.
"It will go before the City Development Committee. We want to be open and transparent," she said.
The $35,266m figure included other associated costs, such as staff training, ACC, KiwiSaver, recruitment and elected member remuneration, she said.
Cr Curach welcomed the change and said elected members had informally discussed adopting policies on both staffing levels and remuneration.
"[Central] government have been aware of the large wage and salary increases over the past few years and in December 2012 introduced a specific clause in legislation to allow elected members to adopt policies on both staffing levels and remuneration," he said.
Elected members had informally discussed such a policy but felt that a better approach to controlling staffing levels was to keep very tight reins in council budgets and by keeping pressure on the chief executive to keep a close check on numbers.
Figures to the year July 2013, show that council employed 33 additional staff.
They also show the council shed 32 staff but Cr Curach, said those staff were on short-term contracts and should not have been included.
