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Councillor Comment - Mistakes of the past should help decision-making

With Otamatea Ward Councillor Jonathan Larsen

The new roading maintenance contract came into effect on 1 July 2018. The contract has an at-risk monthly payment to incentivise the contractor to meet the required standards. Hopefully this will improve responsiveness to ratepayer concerns – I have already had some prompt responses to issues that I have raised. If you have any issues with roads or other Council customer service issues, you can email them to council@kaipara.govt.nz or phone 0800 100 388. If you don’t get a satisfactory response let me know and I’ll follow up.

After months of workshops, hearings and deliberations, the Long Term Plan 2018-2028 (LTP) was finally adopted and rates demands are about to arrive in mailboxes. This is the Council’s ten year budget which is reviewed every three years. The LTP has set average rates increases of 4.97% for 2018/19, 5.26% for 2019/20 and 4.83% for 2020/2021. 

Now that the LTP has been adopted by majority vote of Council I am required to support this decision and implementation of the plan. I have however been asked recently why I moved to amend the plan and ultimately voted against it, and think I have a duty to explain. The main reasons were:

1. I think the proposed approximately 5% average rates increase, compounding each year for the next three years, is excessive. The local government cost index (LGCI), our best measure of the inflated cost of running Council, is forecast at around 2% for the next three years. I saw increased spending on staff and consultants, but no internal efficiencies and no increases in levels of service to ratepayers. Therefore I found the 3% margin between the LGCI and the rates increase hard to justify.

2. The 5% increase is an average, and for some, including revaluation, the increase this year will be up to 34%. I thought this was an unreasonable and unnecessary burden especially in times of relatively low inflation.

3. Council proposes spending $7.32 million on reviewing the District Plan. I don’t think this is prudent and certainly not without a comprehensive business case to support it. Planning for growth is important, but each $200k represents about one percent of rates, so that’s a pretty expensive book review! With such a large budget, I am concerned that this will become a feeding frenzy with consultants and planners capturing the process and wasting ratepayer money. This happened when the cost of the last review blew out to about $5 million. I think we need to learn from our history and not repeat Council's spendthrift mistakes of the past.

4. The implementation of the Mangawhai Community Plan (MCP) was consulted on to be 80% funded by a targeted rate on "Mangawhai" properties. However the LTP is now imposing the 80% rate on an area that extends as far west as Baldrock Rd towards Kaiwaka. This area could not reasonably be considered to be Mangawhai, and I was not satisfied with the legal opinions provided to support this approach. Furthermore the rate is now being funded via a differential on the general rate and not via a targeted rate. This was also not consulted on, and means that the MCP rate is hidden in the general rate. Ratepayers therefore can't easily see how much they are actually paying towards the MCP.

If you have any community projects or issues that you would like assistance with, I can be contacted on 021 185 8389 or Cr.Larsen@kaipara.govt.nz. Check out my ‘The WorkBoot Councillor’ Facebook page for regular updates.

 DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not represent the consensus position of Council.

 
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