"Lie back and think of England" - Aurora's at it again

 

 

Big salary hikes at under-performing Dunedin council-owned company 

A council-owned lines company has been described as a "train-wreck" as its costs and salaries balloon – but there may still be worse to come for customers.

It has been three years since Richard Healey turned whistleblower, exposing the perilous state of power poles and ageing infrastructure across Otago.   

------(continued after Richard Healey's facebk comment)....

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/116156058/big-salary-hikes-at-underperforming-dunedin-councilowned-company

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Richard Healey:

The price rise will be phased in over time - but stay in place forever. It's huge. The Commerce Commision and the politicians don't want to scare you too much - they hope you'll sleepwalk into paying double your current line charges. If you are in Alexandra or Wanaka you will likely end up paying about a thousand dollars a year more for your electricity - at a time when other companies are being told to REDUCE their prices by as much as 30%
How quickly will the rises come? The Commerce Commision have already signaled rises that total 52% over four years, 61% over five - but that's BEFORE the extra price rises that Aurora have applied for.

The AVERAGE salary increase at Aurora in the last year was 18.8%.
All this to fix a situation that Aurora board chair Steve Thompson described as a problem of perception!! The same guy who chairs the Board of Alpine Energy - the company that the Timaru newspapers tell is is under investigation by the office of the Auditor General.

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 Big salary hikes at under-performing Dunedin council-owned company

Hamish McNeilly13:08, Sep 29 2019

..........After going public and quitting his job at Delta, the Dunedin City Council-owned company has undergone significant changes of its own, including being split between Delta Utility Services and Aurora Energy and the announcement of a $748 million investment plan.

But the upgrade plan, including the number of poles Aurora has replaced or reinforced since last year, has "drastically dropped ... [and] the whole programme is in utter disarray", Healey said......

....The company's annual report – released last week by Dunedin City Holdings Ltd, an investment company owned by the council – revealed 48 employees were paid more than $100,000 a year,  including six paid more than $200,000.......

  

......Compounding the company's financial woes was that Aurora recorded a net operating loss of $10.9m, including a $5m provision for potential financial penalties prompted by a Commerce Commission investigation.

The investigation was for breaching regulated quality standards in 2016 and 2017.

 

Aurora Energy chief executive Richard Fletcher says the company had to increase wages to "employ and retain highly skilled and qualified specialists".