Payments deferred

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 1

Payments deferred

The City Council last evening decided to defer the question of increasing the honorarium of the Mayor (Mr A. R. Guthrey) and the payment to councillors for attending meetings, until the September meeting of the council. The Municipal Amendment Act, 1970, permits the payment of honoraria to the mayors of each of the four main cities not exceeding $6250 a year. Mr Guthrey’s honorarium is $5OOO. The act also permits the payment for councillors attending meetings to be increased from $3 to $5, for

|each meeting, with the total amount in any financial year being increased from $156 to $260. The by-laws committee recommended that consideration of both increases be deferred to the September meeting when the committee would make recommendations to the council. The committee recommended that a remit be forwarded to the Municipal Association suggesting that the number of meetings for which councillors receive payment if they attend be increased from the present limit of 52 a year; that a territorial local authority be authorised to grant additional remuneration to chairmen of standing committees,

based on. the time that council duties require of them; and that a territorial local authority be authorised to grant an annual allowance to a deputy-mayor to be based on the time he would be required to act on behalf of the mayor. Cr H. P. Smith said it should be made, clear that there was nothing sinister in deferring the decisions. The council had to make a decision before the end of its term of office as the incoming council would not be permitted to make a decision. The decisions had to be made before the local body elections in Octobe . Cr Smith’s statement met with the approval of the remaining councillors.