‘Help!’ - Mayor Wayne Brown’s ‘moaning’ first email to Auckland Council CEO covering beer, balance sheets and 400 jobs

A self-described “moan” of an email sent by mayor Wayne Brown has berated Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback over a list of procedural inadequacies - including financial reports “with no numbers”, an inability to stock a beer fridge, and advertising 400 jobs when managerial cuts “are more than on the cards”.

The email from Brown to Stabback on October 19 last year was sent barely a week after he was elected mayor of Auckland and was obtained by the Herald under the Local Government Official Information Act.

The subject title of the email is “Progress” and CC’d into the correspondence is Brown’s former chief of staff, Tim Hurdle.

The tone of the email is established from Brown’s first line which opens: “Hi Jim, Things happen very slowly at Council”.

It is most likely the first official email between the new mayor and the council chief executive, as the Herald requested all correspondence between the pair from the first day of Brown’s October 8 election.

From the outset, Brown definitely lives up to his campaign vow to not spare employees’ feelings in shaking up procedural matters and his perception of bureaucratic waste.

First up on Brown’s list of complaints is an alleged lack of detail and numbers in the council financial reports he’s received in his first 11 days in the top job.

“Simple things like getting paper copies of recent council activities just don’t happen. So far I have received copies of only two meeting papers,” Brown writes.

The new mayor references “an excruciating 110-page paper on BIDs that discussed things that are not even council’s business”.

The letter is strewn with short exasperated sentences ended with exclamation points.

“No numbers at all in the whole meeting papers!” Brown writes, as well as: “Help! The financial briefing we got was very underwhelming. No P&L, no balance sheets.”

Jim Stabback, the Auckland Council's chief executive, and mayor Wayne Brown as Brown started the first day of his term. Photo / NZME

Brown, 76, was the former Far North mayor, has chaired three hospital boards and held various public sector roles including overseeing Transpower, Land Transport Safety Authority and TVNZ. The first email to Stabback makes clear he is very unimpressed with the standard of financial transparency or foresight in his first Auckland Council reports.

“These should be on the first page of every finance meeting showing both group and council and movements and relationship to budget. As pointed out at the meeting there was no forward-looking mention of big nasty things coming like CRL and Port automation losses. No response to requests to follow up on these.”

Council acting chief executive chief financial officer Peter Gudsell told the Herald when presented with Brown’s complaints that the council continues to meet its obligations around financial reporting including audits.

In response to Brown’s complaint about a lack of numbers, Gudsell said: “The scale of the council group means that balance sheet movements from month to month are often immaterial, therefore substantial financial reporting has been provided to the finance and CCO oversight committees on a quarterly basis.”

But Gudsell indicated that in November, in consultation with Brown, monthly group financial updates and a report from the group chief financial officer to the governing body of Auckland councillors was introduced.

Another point of intrigue in the letter is Brown’s reference to a catered function, which Gudsell clarified to the Herald was a morning tea to welcome the new mayor and councillors on October 14.

“The council briefing day papers have not been made available to know what they were told and the feast catered for has been reported as better than many weddings,” the mayor says.

Brown appears to contrast the extravagance of this morning tea with what appears to be an inability to get a personal beer supply.

“The simple process of getting and stocking a beer fridge has defeated the system,” Brown writes.

Brown also indirectly raises a very key campaign pledge of his to slash the salaries of the managerial ranks of Auckland Council staff by up to 30 per cent.

“Are we still advertising 400 jobs, at a time when job cuts, especially on mid and upper-level managers are more than on the cards?”

Gudsell confirmed “it is correct to assume that around 400 roles may be advertised at any one time across the council group”.

But the acting chief executive said a 15 per cent “churn” of a 7000 workforce is fairly standard and additional hiring restrictions within the council were put in place in October.

The habits and restraint of the 20 Auckland councillors and how they run their own offices also comes in for a swipe by Brown.

“I still don’t have a copy of the organisation chart so I can’t understand all of the council bits and who is in charge of what,” Brown writes.

“No doubt this lack of clarity is why councillors keep asking for more staff when there are probably twice as many as needed. Councillors need to be more self-sufficient and should set an example of frugality.”

Gudsell clarified to the Herald that Brown had requested an organisation chart for the whole of the council, but it was “noted” to the new mayor that to “provide a printed organisation chart for an organisation of our size wasn’t practical”.

The mayor has been provided with a chart outlining the top four executive tiers.

In response to accusations of councillors lacking of frugality, Gudsell pointed out “how the staffing and support functions of the organisation work … was provided during the Kura Kawana [induction] briefings”.

One Auckland councillor who saw the email described Brown’s sentiments as “scattergun stuff and nonsense”.

“The mayor seems to have a warped sense of frugality if getting a fully stocked beer fridge in his office - on the ratepayer tab - is his main priority,” said the councillor, who did not want to be named.

“I guess it just confirms his double standards. From the way the email is written it’s pretty the mayor [clear] needs to break the no-hire rule, get some decent strategic thinkers in his office and dispense with the bunch of election campaign mates gathered around the beer fridge.”

The parting sentiment of Brown’s first email to the Auckland Council chief executive is one of impatience and frustration.

“There has been progress on some issues that my team are pushing but I haven’t yet met your [Stabback’s] senior team, so can we move things along. The first council meeting is getting close and it needs to set standards for the next three years,” Brown writes.

“I’ll try not to moan but it is frustrating.”

As a general response to Brown’s exasperated first email, Gudsell told the Herald this week that it was sent “soon after the election and during a time of induction” for the mayor.

“It is expected that new elected members will have many questions about the running of our large and complex organisation, and we were prepared to respond to the priorities our new elected members set out,” Gudsell said.

Following publication of this article, a spokesperson for the mayor said he believed there had been improvement in some of the issues raised his letter to Stabback over the past few months.

“Mayor Brown thinks some of the senior officers are getting the message that Auckland voters and he are demanding big changes, and there has been some progress including the governing body so strongly backing his budget proposal and the new letters of expectation which have set a new sense of direction for Auckland Transport and the port company in particular - but it is still early days and there is a long way to go,” the spokesperson said.