Marti Zucco wants better remuneration for councillors to attract talent and experience
Hobart alderman Marti Zucco says councillors need salaries of up to $120,000 to attract quality candidates, claiming current pay rates risks ‘monkeys’ hired to local government. VOTE IN OUR POLL
A Hobart alderman says councillors should be paid between $80,000 and $120,000 a year to attract “talented and experienced” people to local government.
The Hobart City Council on Monday night will discuss its response to the government’s proposed reforms to councillor numbers and allowances and Marti Zucco says if you want “good quality people” to run, “they must be remunerated accordingly”.
“While it is agreed that the low pay for councillors is problematic, it is not agreed that the proposed 14.25 per cent average increase is enough of a change,” the recommendation to council says.
“The council considered that a more substantial increase is needed to achieve the ambition of encouraging more talented candidates to stand for and serve as councillors.”
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Mr Zucco said for some business people “it actually costs us money to be on council”.
“When I had my restaurants, I used to have to employ people to go to all these meetings to manage my businesses at that time,” he said.
“People might say that I made the choice – but I made a choice to contribute to a better city.”
Mr Zucco, who also wants 29 councils reduced to five, said better remuneration would attract younger people and those in business who wanted to contribute to their community.
“When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, or worse, clueless ideological people with single-focused interests and without the skills or expertise necessary for effective governance.
“Proper remuneration for five regional councils would attract talented, experienced people who currently wouldn’t consider local government because the compensation doesn’t reflect the responsibility.”
Fellow councillor and businessman, John Kelly, agrees.
“In the main, small allowances will only ever attract a section of society that have a lot of time on their hands and are typically not in touch with ratepayers,” he said.
“If councils are to be run more like a business and attract a more diverse membership allowances will need to rise – you get what you pay for.”
The council recommendation says if the number of Hobart councillors was reduced from 12 to nine and allowances were increased it would save $62,766 a year.
The allowance for councillors would increase from $43,755 to $51,366.
Local Government of Tasmania president Mick Tucker said reform chair Sue Smith had proposed an independent board to review council numbers and allowances.
“We have some extremely valuable, highly intellectual, competent, confident councillors around the table (but) we want to make it a little bit more professional,” he said.
“The workload today of a councillor is no longer roads, rates and rubbish.
“We have councils that are managing health centres and doctors, the whole works and child care, to name a few so we need high quality calibre candidates but the remuneration is a very small part of it.
“People stand because they believe in community.”
Mr Tucker said younger people with families wanted to put their hand up to run “but financially they just can’t afford to”.
He said regional and rural councils sometimes struggled to attract new blood.
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