Revealed: How much Gladstone councillor’s earnt

Here is how much your councillors earnt, how many complaints were made, how much was spent in discretionary funds and how the council performed to its KPIs.

Gladstone regional councillors’ salaries have been revealed and the organisation’s performance scores have been unveiled with the release of the past financial year’s annual report.

About $5.34 billion in Gross Regional Product was reported, 29,072 regional jobs, 3701 local businesses, 566,000 visitors per annum and about 300 babies born each year.

Mayor Matt Burnett made a total of $177,861.98, Deputy Mayor Kahn Goodlock $113,865.39, and the other councillors $102,488.14 each.

The councillors collectively spent $206,892.95 in expenses and provision of facilities.

Mr Burnett was the biggest spender with $34,280.50, of which $10,606.54 was accommodation and almost $3000 worth of hospitality.

Next came councillor Glenn Churchill who spent $26,265.73, including $2515 in seminars and conferences, and $4450 in travel and accommodation.

Councillors Chris Trevor and Chris Cameron were the most frugal spenders, with $18,144.19 and $17,881.68 worth of expenses respectively and neither recorded any spendings for travel and accommodation, hospitality, seminars and conferences, or ICT.

The annual report shows there was one ‘senior executive’ that made between $350,000 to $399,999, six that made between $250,000 to $299,999 and one that made between $200,000 to $249,000. These are all higher figures than Mr Burnett’s pay.

These salaries are set by the independent Local Government Remuneration Commission.

The council met four out of six of its KPIs for its ‘connect’ strategic goals and six out of seven actions were achieved, according to the 2018-2023 Corporate Plan.

KPIs that were met include hitting a community sentiment score over 30 (61.2), 100 per cent delivery of endorsed Community Recovery Group plans, 20 per cent reduction of the average LTIFR (58 per cent) and 5 per cent improvement on employee engagement (43 per cent).

But council fell short of the KPI of achieving 90 per cent or greater close-out of environmental non-compliance actions (80 per cent) and fell well short of 90 per cent compliance with audit items within the agreed time frame (55 per cent).

Council met three out of four KPIs for its ‘innovate’ goals, including 80 per cent of enquiries resolved at first point (85 per cent), 100 per cent completion of scheduled Asset Management Improvement Action Plan and 100 per cent achievement of the agreed Capital Delivery Program.

But it fell short of 85 per cent of Customer Service Requests completed within 10 days (71 per cent).

It achieved three out of four actions for this section.

Both KPIs and three out of four actions for ‘diversify’ were met, which were 100 per cent delivery of endorsed economic recovery group plans for the year, and actively using the Investment Decision Framework for decision making.

Council met all but one task for its Covid recovery plan.

There were 393 administrative action complaints made in the past financial year, 335 of which were resolved.

The council identified 25 improvements to operations through these complaints.

The Queensland Ombudsman referred five complaints to council for review and only two remain pending for advice.

One employee matter was referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission.

Mr Burnett spent $82,000 as part of the Mayor’s Discretionary Fund, which allows funding for emergent community projects.

The biggest of these spends was $7500 for Start-Up Gladstone’s Mayors Innovation Award as well as $6000 for the same organisation’s Young Entrepreneurs Network.

Council also spent almost $2 million in donations, the largest being $683,388 in sporting body subsidies.

There was also $728,000 spent in community investment.

The Queensland Audit Office determined these figures were accurately calculated.