Waipā spent more than $14 million on consultants in the financial year ended June 30 – up from $13.7 million the previous year.
Waipa CEO Steph O’Sullivan, left, with Chamber CEO Kelly Bouzaid
The council provided the figures to Cambridge Chamber chief executive Kelly Bouzaid – treating it as a Local Government Official Information Act request – but drilling down even further would have cost the chamber $6000.
Kelly Bouzaid
“I’ve got no issue with the role of consultants,” she told members who attended an address by new Waipā chief executive Steph O’Sullivan last week in the Town Hall.
The chamber asked for descriptions of projects’ scope, objectives and key deliverables to understand the ‘value impact’ consultants played on council projects.
“We asked to understand performance and evaluation and we were, I’ll be honest, very interested around the consultant costs for Cambridge Connections which we all know was a train wreck.”
The chamber also wanted to know the rationale behind the use of consultants to which the council responded it could not be made available without substantial collation and research and estimated the cost at $6000 because it would “unreasonably interfere with the operations of council.”
Steph O’Sullivan
Bouzaid said she hoped O’Sullivan would create a culture offering the chamber the opportunity to have good, robust conversations, “with a sprinkle of tension”.
“That is a great example of that relationship transparency and it’s an enquiry which is entirely justified,” said O’Sullivan.
“Consultants do form an important part of our business, and I can probably guarantee there will be some consultants who are working for us in the room tonight.”
They could be consulting on swimming pool facilities, parks, transport or large infrastructure projects.
“They are large complex projects and we could either have those people on staff which will hit your rating base every year and increase my opex (operating expenditure) costs or they could be specialist consultants that are working on large and significant projects that are multi year and sophisticated projects where you require specialist skills that I cannot keep in our organisation the whole time.”
The council would continue to use consultants, but councillors had asked her to look at Waipā’s business. She will do a review soon of the organisation to look for efficiency and effectiveness gains.
“In my experience, we run a pretty lean shop most of the time and we will continue to run that lean shop while we deliver outcomes to the community,” she said because the council was a public service and needed to be transparent.
O’Sullivan told The News she would discuss Bouzaid’s questions with the council team and respond as best she could because the business community was wanting to understand the use of consultants by Waipā District Council.
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Waipa CEO Steph O’Sullivan speaking at the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce event. Photo: Mary Anne Gill
