Source: Radio New Zealand
The council said 19 percent rise would cost the average ratepayer about $13 extra a week extra – almost $700 a year. RNZ / Quin Tauetau
Waitaki’s ratepayers are looking at a 19 percent rates hike for the coming year.
Mayor Mel Tavendale is warning that will only just keep their heads above water.
The Waitaki District Council, on the border of Otago and Canterbury, said 19 percent rise would cost the average ratepayer about $13 extra a week – almost $700 a year.
Tavendale said the increase was primarily driven by increasing costs and an expensive water services capital expenditure programme.
The previous council had proposed a 7 per cent rates increase for its 14,000 ratepayers knowing that would not cover costs, she said.
The proposed 19 percent rates increase was just the bargain basement figure and as low as the council could go, Tavendale said.
Waitaki Mayor Mel Tavendale Jackie Tav
“We are really aware that we are doing this at a time when our community is already hurting so it is a tough conversation to have,” she said.
“It is one that if we could not have it – it would be fantastic. But at the end of the day you also need to do the right thing and have the brave conversations because we can’t keep going in this trajectory.”
Four of the 10 councillors voted against consulting on a 19 percent increase but only one of the four was pushing for a lower figure.
Councillor Sven Thelning was among those who thought it should be even higher and said strictly based on the financials they should be going for a 45 percent increase.
“The 19 percent is the bottom, absolute least we could do,” Thelning said.
“It risks us running into that debt cap and that’s when the money runs out and then we’re in even more trouble. So 45 percent is not good but going broke would be worse.”
Oamaru Ratepayers and Residents Association chair Ray Henderson said the council had long tried to keep rates as low as possible and that had now come back to bite current ratepayers.
Many people in the area were already struggling financially, he said.
“The Waitaki district has a much higher demographic of retired people than the rest of the country – so a lot of people living on a fixed income. So when prices keep going up and up and up, and your income only goes up about two and a half per cent when the super increases every year, you get behind. So yes it will affect them dramatically.”
The rates hike would have to be faced, Henderson said.
But he questioned where some of the council’s money was going and the size of its workforce.
North Otago Grey Power president Andrew Dunn said the options presented by the council were not very palatable.
The 19 percent hike was unreasonable, he said.
Kevin Malcolm, deputy chair of the Otago Regional council and a Waitaki district resident, said the proposed increase revealed wider issues with local government and why amalgamation of Otago’s six district councils was needed.
“You can’t control the price of steel or the price of equipment to build a bridge, or what ever you are doing, but you can control the duplication we have within our system,” he said
“We simply don’t need chief executive and six planning teams and six leadership teams to run Otago.”
The council is putting together information on the proposed rates increase and it will go out to the public for feedback in the coming weeks.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
