REDLAND City Council’s full-time staff are some of the most expensive local government employees in south-east Queensland.
A Fairfax Media survey of staffing across 12 local governments found Redland spent $80.137million, nearly a third of its $275million annual budget, on employing 866 full-time staff.
The average annual cost per full-time equivalent Redland employee was $92,470 – second only to The Gold Coast, where the average annual cost per full-time equivalent employee was $104,296.
Brisbane City’s 7500 full-time staff cost its ratepayers $674million, which is 26 per cent of its $2.6billion budget.
Brisbane’s average annual cost per full-time employee was $89,904 which was $2566 less than the average for a Redland council employee.
For every one of Redland council’s 866 staff, there were 172 residents living in the city (1:172).
Brisbane’s staff to population ratio was 1:153, the Gold Coast’s 1:173 and Ipswich’s 1:183.
A council spokesman said the organisation closely monitored staff levels and measured all Council operations against service expectations.
The spokesman said full-time equivalent staff numbers were cut almost 10per cent (959 in 2010-11 to 870 2015-16) over the past six years.
"This has been achieved through a back-to-basics commitment that focuses on key Council services and included an internal restructure that reduced the number of executive level roles," the staff member said.
"Regional Councils, or those that service large geographic regions or island communities, such as the Redlands, will undoubtedly have costs to service these communities that larger Councils (with a larger rates base) don’t have.
"It also needs to be pointed out that comparing FTE numbers across all SEQ Councils is not accurate because some SEQ Councils operate their own water service while others don’t. Comparing Councils that operate their own water business against those who don’t will always result those that operate their own water business, such as the Redlands and Gold Coast, having a higher FTE number."
