Tom Campbell said while councillors were used to dealing with large amounts of money, "horror struck" was the word he would use to describe paying about $475,000 for the audit.
"It doesn’t mean we don’t move forward with this, because we have no choice."
He said he appreciated that there had been a conversation about a lower fee "but I’m assuming it’s in the order of a few percent".
The long-term plan would also need to be audited and would likely cost as much, he said.
At the council’s risk and assurance committee meeting on Tuesday, councillors discussed a report outlining the 2025-26 annual report plan, fee proposal and engagement letter.
In the report prepared by council chief financial officer Bryan Staunton it said that in 2023, audit fees increased due to the broadening scope of the audit.
At the time, the fee increase was offset by a negotiated annual discount for three years.
This year, this discount has now been removed.
The cost of the audit was projected to be $475,060 which was an increase of $42,758 from last year’s fee.
There was also a 2.8% increase in the fee due to auditor staff salary cost movements and an inflationary increase to disbursement costs.
Disbursement costs of $26,000 were allowed for staff to travel and work on site.
It is predicted to take more than 1700 staff hours to complete the audit.
Committee chairman independent member Ross Jackson said he and independent member Lesley Soper spoke to Audit New Zealand staff last week about a reduction in the fee.
There would be a small reduction but it had not been agreed to yet, he said.
Audit New Zealand’s Athol Graham has been appointed to conduct the audit and attended the meeting via livestream.
Mr Graham said a reduction could be possible since the amount of work staff needed to do was not quite as large as in 2025 and if staff worked remotely some of the time that could lower the disbursement allowance.
"I’ll just have to get my calculator out and see what that looks like, but I’ll come back with an amended proposal."
Cr Grant Dermody asked how ratepayers would know they were getting value for money for the audit.
Mr Jackson said the best assurance for ratepayers was knowing the auditors would be providing an independent audit of the council.
The interim audit is due to begin next month, the draft annual report will be available in September after which the final audit would begin and the audit opinion issued in November.
