What NEXT? Gonna fire their Official City Leprechaun?! New Zealand's Christchurch city fires their Official City Wizard annnd we're dead

Sam J. | 11:47 AM on October 17, 2021

What’s a city wizard? WE WANT ONE!

In New Zealand, the Christchurch city council has declined to renew the contract of their official city wizard.

— Quite Interesting (@qikipedia) October 17, 2021

How could they DO THIS?!

Firing their official city wizard.

The horror.

For more than two decades, the New Zealand city of Christchurch has annually paid thousands of dollars to Ian Brackenbury Channell, known as the official Wizard of New Zealand.

Now the city council wants him to disappear.

Channell has been paid $16,000 annually in New Zealand dollars (about $11,290 U.S.) – about $368,000 ($260,000 in U.S. dollars) over 23 years – for “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services,” the city’s assistant chief executive Lynn McClelland said in a statement to USA TODAY.

What the heck are acts of wizadry and other wizard-like services?

Have they been turning people into frogs over there?

Massachusetts has an official witch. I've met her. Laurie Cabot. Nice lady.

— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) October 17, 2021

Sure, but does she have a taxpayer funded paycheck or is it more of a ceremonial thing?

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) October 17, 2021

Definitely just ceremonial. I doubt many people in MA even know who she is or that she holds such a title, although she is kind of well known. I mean, when you look up famous living witches, she's easily in the top 3.

— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) October 17, 2021