Hamilton City Council promises ratepayers a procurement overhaul after damning report

Thursday, 19 March 2026

A rev-up of how the city council awards major contracts is under way, with a new subcommittee, a 35-point reform plan, and a promise to be more open.

It follows a damning report on procurement that found several high-value deals were among the $239 million (12%) of Hamilton City Council contract value that did not go through a tender process. The 2024 KPMG report also pointed to weak oversight and staff finding “workarounds”, but was not made public for two years.

“This is not business as usual,’’ Procurement Subcommittee chairperson Andrew Bydder said.

“We want to make changes and today is just the start.’’

With ratepayers said to be “skimping on food” and “crying out for relief”, councillors emphasised the importance of getting it right.

Bydder told the subcommittee’s inaugural meeting on Wednesday that council management has developed a 35-point action Procurement Improvement Plan, with goals that include strengthening controls and improving commercial outcomes.

“This shows how seriously we are taking this,’’ he said.

Two councillors have been tasked with deep-dives on the use of consultants and transport.

Sue Moroney will examine how to reduce the council spend on outside consultants by bringing those roles in-house.

Graeme Mead will look into transport procurement and consider whether the council needs to change its panel procurement process, which issues contracts to a pre-selected group of approved suppliers.

At the meeting, Mead laid out how important saving on infrastructure procurement is to ratepayers.

“The cost of infrastructure is not sustainable. I meet people who simply cannot pay more in rates. They are skimping on food. We need to make savings,’’ he said.

A report to councillors acknowledges “gaps in visibility, consistency, data quality and commercial discipline”.

“The intention is to shift Council from a reactive, decentralised procurement environment toward an established and transparent model over 12–36 months,” chief financial officer Gary Connolly’s report says.

The plan includes shifting greater control of high-value and high-risk contracts to a central procurement team, council documents show. Smaller purchases can stay with council departments but there will be tighter rules and oversight.

More procurement information will be published for the community to see, the council says.

Tangible changes expected within six months include live dashboards showing where money is being spent and with whom, standardised procurement workflows, and digital systems for approvals and contracts.

Mayor Tim Macindoe, who included transparency in procurement as his Mayor’s Plan during last year’s election campaign, said he’s pleased with the new subcommittee and the work so far.

“The majority of voters, as far as I can see, were primarily concerned about council's procurement, our high level of debt, the persistent rates increases that they had been facing, and were locked into the current long term plan.

“They were crying out for relief.

“So, trying to find a new way of dealing with procurement was an obvious answer to the concerns that they raised.”

Cr Rachel Kalarus liked the introduction of a more transparent guide for showing weighting for local suppliers, who had been “very vocal about the sense of being shut out of contracting opportunities or tendering processes’’. The guide is on the council website.

Latest reporting to the Procurement Subcommittee shows $14.2 million of competitively-sourced council contracts were awarded between July 2025 and December 2025, across 26 contracts.

Another $26.56m of council panel contracts were also awarded across 179 contracts, and $12.2m of direct contracts were approved through a council resolution.