The council held a workshop on April 15 to begin honing department budgets for the proposed 2025-26 long-term plan.
The discussions followed a revision of all council departments under "transformation" from July 2024.
Departments were cut from four to five and the respective managers are now termed as "directors".
Chief executive Alex Parmley last month told councillors new department "teams" under transformation — which he emphatically said was not a restructure — were yet to fully be "stood up".
The consequent department costings were also not ready in time for the formal long-term plan public consultation period from February 4.
Last week, Waitaki District Mayor Gary Kircher said a governance briefing on April 15 was "the first opportunity for quite some time" to get a clearer picture.
A closed workshop to begin fleshing out individual department budgets was scheduled that afternoon.
Mr Kircher said the potential impact was "about people’s jobs".
Having it open then would be "just not fair".
But getting a handle on comparable department costs was complicated by "the transformation" with previous headings disappearing in the new structure.
"Some of the roles, the funding itself, is now made up of components more than it was before," Mr Kircher said.
The council announced a 9% reduction of its 211 fulltime-equivalent roles last July.
Most staff were to reapply for redefined positions, with some choosing to leave.
Mr Kircher said transparency in a future open workshop "would be good".
In February, councillors were told staff costs would be over budget by $1.4m by the end of the current financial year.
The budget for the first six months was $8.93m but the spend was $9.6m or more than $600,000 above budget.
On February 25, Mr Parmley said the 9% staff reduction had not yet been finalised, and appointments were still in the mix. But he expected a cost reduction down the line.
"We’ve got other costs going up associated with staff, though.
"The 9% reduction isn’t all going to come in straight away.
"I would expect we’ll be looking at a reduced personnel cost," Mr Parmley said.
Mr Kircher told the Oamaru Mail transformation was never about cutting budgets.
"We weren’t doing it to save money.
"One of the outcomes is we will be delivering [services] better, whether its for the same money, or more for less."
As of last week the mayor believed "quite a number" of vacancies remained at the council after some staff chose to leave.
"For the new structure, there is still quite a few gaps," Mr Kircher said.
The impact on service levels was hard to gauge at this point, including any resistance internally.
"From our perspective, we don’t know; where we are seeing changes and so forth is maybe because of those gaps.
"It is quite a different way of working for some people.
"We’re still focused on the outcome which is delivering better services to our community."
Acting chief executive Lisa Baillie, responding to Oamaru Mail questions, said one FTE position at the council before transformation was now being filled by an external contractor "on a temporary basis".
Recruitment for that position in the support services area was under way.
The council no longer had any seconded staff from other councils.
When transformation began, Waitaki had no external contractors covering in-house positions.
