Date: 21st August 2026

South Australian local government is navigating a rare double disruption: a five-month deferral of council elections, and a wave of senior staff departures that has some in the sector pointing the finger at a new CEO remuneration framework.

Chris Eddy, host of VLGA Connect, sat down with Dr Heather Holmes-Ross, Mayor of the City of Mitcham and President of the Local Government Association of South Australia, to unpack both stories.

Elections pushed from November to April

Council elections originally due this November have been deferred to 7 April next year, after the state’s acting Electoral Commissioner indicated she did not have confidence the Commission could deliver them properly.

For Mayor Holmes-Ross, the announcement was both expected and frustrating. The sector, she said, had been pushing for years to separate local government elections from the state poll — currently held in the same year — after the last local government election was hit by difficulties involving the Electoral Commission. That advocacy went nowhere, she said, until the state election itself didn’t run as smoothly as planned, and the issue suddenly gained traction.

The change creates a genuine headache for council budgeting. Most councils begin their budget process around November to have it ready by June, but an April election means an entirely new council will be sworn in just two months before rates need to be set. Mayor Holmes-Ross said most administrations are responding by preparing “business as usual” budgets — steering clear of major capital works or big surprises — to avoid pre-empting decisions that should sit with the incoming council.

There’s an upside to the disruption, though. The state government has agreed to permanently offset local government elections from state polls going forward. The next election cycle — due in 2030 — will now shift to 2031, meaning the term after this one will run for four years and seven months, reverting to a more conventional November polling date.

A mixed mood in council chambers

The extension has landed differently depending on the chamber. Mayor Holmes-Ross said some councillors are relieved to have extra breathing room, with the deferral effectively pushing what would have been a campaign-dominated year into next year instead. Others — particularly some mayors in chambers with ongoing behavioural issues — are finding the prospect of an additional seven months in the role difficult.

She also flagged a financial risk sitting behind the calmer public mood: with an unusually long gap between budget-setting and the election, there’s more scope for outgoing councils to commit to significant spending before facing voters, or for incoming councils to take a harder line — potentially pushing budgets into deficit by resisting rate rises tied to decisions they didn’t make. “It’s not pretty,” she said of the range of possible outcomes.

CEO turnover and the remuneration tribunal

The second issue on the table: a string of council CEO departures across South Australia, which some in the sector have linked to a relatively new remuneration framework.

Four years ago, the sector agreed to accept oversight from an independent Remuneration Tribunal on CEO salaries — part of a broader deal that also brought councils under financial oversight from the Essential Services Commission of South Australia, in exchange for avoiding rate capping. Mayor Holmes-Ross said the tribunal appears to have interpreted its role as extending beyond oversight into actively reducing salaries, creating eight narrow remuneration bands — more than the five bands used to classify councils themselves — with maximum salaries in several bands sitting below what some CEOs are already contracted to earn.

Crucially, there’s no grandfathering provision. The tribunal has set a deadline of December 2027 by which all CEOs must sit within their determined band — a requirement Mayor Holmes-Ross said sits directly at odds with existing legal contracts that guarantee some CEOs pay above that level. She expects the clash to end up before the courts once the deadline passes, noting the tribunal has already moved to soften the impact somewhat, recently lifting all bands by 4 per cent to account for CPI.

Mayor Holmes-Ross said the departures are a genuine concern for the sector, particularly in regional areas where attracting strong candidates is already difficult, and where a reduced pay ceiling risks narrowing the pool further.

She also pushed back on a recurring media comparison: council CEO salaries measured against the Premier’s pay packet. The more accurate comparison, she said, is against the heads of state government departments — a benchmark against which she argues council CEOs are modestly paid, given the scope and complexity of their roles.

Running again

Despite the turbulence, Holmes-Ross confirmed she intends to recontest the mayoralty in April, telling VLGA Connect it remains “the best job ever.”

Dr Heather Holmes-Ross is Mayor of the City of Mitcham and President of the Local Government Association of South Australia. Her interview appears in the 21 August edition of VLGA Connect on YouTube, and available as a podcast.