Wellington City Council is not ruling out staff cuts as it reveals a proposed multimillion dollar savings package today.
Trimming consultant spending, cuts to climate change work, and charging residents more for cremation services are among the suggested measures.
It follows a line-by-line review of council spending in a bid to bring down a forecast 12.7% rates increase for the 2026/27 year, after years of increases Mayor Andrew Little has said are “not sustainable”.
Ratepayers have faced a cumulative rates increase of 83% over the past five years.
Fifty cost-cutting and revenue-raising recommendations have been released by a working group of councillors tasked with finding savings.
“We’ve probed the budget line by line,” Deputy Mayor Ben McNulty said.
As part of that process, he said the working group asked each council team what the impact of a potential 5% budget cut would be.
He said while there had been some “no brainer ideas”, other suggestions had been more contentious, with the working group agreeing unanimously on 37 of the proposed changes, while 13 were agreed on by a majority vote.
The recommendations will go before the Council Planning and Finance Committee, before being put to the public for consultation as part of the annual plan.
Consultant spending is in the firing line, with the group proposing to shave $600,000 off a current $5.6m consultant budget.
Climate change spending could also be cut, which the report stated could bring in as much as $1.8m in savings.
The council currently carries out both mitigation and adaptation work to achieve its net zero objectives, but “some lower priority mitigation” work and transport education initiatives could be deprioritised in order to find savings.
Scaling down the council’s vehicle fleet, as well of that of council controlled organisations, could save the council $2m, the report found.
Making users pay more for cremation services could bring $77,000 in savings.
Another $70,000 could be found by trimming the amount WellingtonNZ spends on international promotion.
McNulty also revealed the council spends $211,000 a year conserving a rare orchid species as part of the Ōtari Plant Conservation Laboratory research project.
More rideshare electric scooters could be put on the roads, which the council currently makes 15c per ride on, in an attempt to gather more revenue.
Council officers had earlier managed to bring down the initially forecast 12.7% rates rise to 9.4%.
If the working group’s recommendations were implemented, the next rates rise would be 7.4% - a further reduction of 2%.
Council Planning and Finance Committee chair Diane Calvert said the value of the proposed cuts equates to roughly $8m.
The threat of job cuts has been looming at the council for some time, after an independent report suggested the organisation was overstaffed by up to 300 people.
Asked whether the suite of cost-cutting recommendations could lead to layoffs, McNulty could not say.
“It is up to the organisation to implement and find those savings and those efficiencies, and how they find those savings and efficiencies is purely operational,” he said.
“It’s not in the realm of elected members to say”.
Questioned further, McNulty would not rule out the prospect of council staff losing their jobs if the recommendations were to be implemented, saying “it’s based on the chief executive to realise those savings”.
The union representing public service workers has raised the alarm over potential cuts, saying while it understands the need to “soften rates rises”, the council should look at other options rather than slashing its workforce.
“Job cuts would undermine the city just at a time when it’s trying to recover from the aftershocks of the Government’s brutal cuts across the public sector including jobs in Wellington’s health and science sectors,” Public Service Association national secretary Duane Leo said.
Green Party councillors have spoken out against proposed cuts they feel will take the city’s climate response backwards.
“Our Government is pulling away from climate action. Wellington needs to step up, not step back,” councillor Rebecca Matthews said.
The four Green Party councillors are calling on the mayor to take what they are calling the “climate cuts” off the table at next week’s meeting.
Climate initiatives are understood to have been a key sticking point in negotiations for the council’s Triennium Plan released earlier this week.
Laurie Foon, a Green councillor and former deputy mayor said she was pleased to see Little “face down” opposition from across the council table over the council’s Carbon Zero by 2050.
“We only need to look at the state of our water infrastructure to see what happens when our leaders kick the can down the road, let’s not make the same mistake again,” Geordie Rogers said.
Green Party MP Tamatha Paul has also spoken out against the proposal, saying it represents a “major slash and burn cuts to climate change” and risks the capital’s “green reputation”.
“Our city has been internationally recognised for its leadership in reducing emissions and transforming our transport system. This cost-cutting proposal completely guts that reputation and decades of good Green mahi within the council,” Paul, a former Wellington City Councillor, said in a statement.
Ethan Manera is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.