100 projects - and that's just for starters

Len Brown will spend the next few days finalising which councillors will get the top roles and therefore the bigger salaries. Photo / Dean Purcell

Super City Mayor-elect Len Brown plans to hit the ground running with 100 projects in his first 100 days in office.

Mr Brown would not specify any of the projects before he is sworn in on November 1, except to say they would vary from small local projects to large ones over 10 to 15 years.

"They could be projects we have already had some discussion about or they could be brand new and you have never heard of before," he said.

Mr Brown said he picked up through the election campaign that Auckland had drifted into a hiatus, and he wanted the community to know he would be taking them "on what could be an exhilarating journey".

"When I take the oath and other councillors take the oath, we are going to hit the ground running," he said.

With seven days until the Super City comes into being, Mr Brown is flat out trying to get the political building blocks in place - finalise a committee structure for the Auckland Council, and get the 21 local boards and seven council-controlled organisations up and running.

Having appointed Penny Hulse as his deputy mayor, Mr Brown is exercising his executive power to finalise the chairs and members of the council committees. Who gets the top jobs and therefore bigger salaries will be a test of his leadership and a pointer to what he hopes will be a "collaborative" council to deliver his vision.

The base salary for councillors is $80,000. The salaries for committee chairs have yet to be set.

The committee structure will be announced on Thursday.

The structure will include the names of senior councillors who will join Mr Brown on a political panel to shortlist up to 15 new directors for six of the CCOs for the full council to confirm.

In August, Local Government Minister Rodney Hide appointed 29 unelected directors to run more than 70 per cent of the Super City services, leaving open two or three appointments on all the CCOs, except Watercare Services.

Advertisements have started running for the extra positions and Mr Brown said he wanted to see applicants with a "broad range of experiences and with strong links back to the community".

Asked if this was moving away from business faces on the CCOs, Mr Brown said good governance of corporate structures was not necessarily the prerogative of people with a strong business background.

"We are looking for good balance and good representation on those CCO panels ... Some of the appointments I do will look to bring a different skill set to the CCOs."