Cathedral levy looms for city’s ratepayers
A Christchurch city councillor believes the local authority will cop criticism over a proposed levy to help rebuild Christ Church Cathedral.
The council is proposing an average rates increase of 5.5 per cent – $2.64 a week for a house valued just over $500,000 – from July. Increases will gradually decline from 2019-20.
Also included in its draft Long Term Plan (LTP), released yesterday, is a proposal to introduce a new rate to cover the council’s $10 million contribution to help reinstate the cathedral. The levy would be $7.19 per property each year for 10 years.
Ratepayers will be able to give feedback on the plan in April and May, before it is finalised in June.
Councillor Yani Johanson believed the proposed rates increase was ‘‘incredibly reasonable’’ considering the city was dealing with earthquake, flood and fire damage.
‘‘We’ve had the most extraordinary set of circumstances in recent history that has meant that we’ve got huge financial challenges,’’ he said.
However, he was expecting strong feedback on the targeted cathedral rate.
‘‘I think it’s an iconic heritage building and it definitely should be repaired and rebuilt, but the point I made was can council afford to do it when we’ve got such serious damage to our infrastructure? And we’ve got our own [damaged] heritage buildings . . .’’
Most Christchurch residents who submitted on the city council grant to help restore the cathedral did not want ratepayers’ money used.
Some 1063 submissions were received and 54.5 per cent (579) did not support the move, while 45.2 per cent (481) wanted the council to grant the money.
The $10m grant was approved just before Christmas, despite objections.
Johanson said many submissions against the grant were from residents of the eastern suburbs, ‘‘where the infrastructure is still in a shocking state’’.
In a statement, Mayor Lianne Dalziel said council’s biggest challenge related to the infrastructure rebuild. It planned to invest $4.18 billion in infrastructure over the next 10 years.
‘‘This is partly because so much of the earthquake damage was not repaired under the Scirt programme and the land drainage recovery programme was not covered by the cost-sharing agreement [with the Crown],’’ she said.
Some councillors last year attacked the former National government over being ‘‘short-changed’’ during the rebuild of Christchurch’s pipes and roads.
A report on the Horizontal Infrastructure Governance Group, which oversaw Scirt, pointed to ‘‘tensions between funders on what each expected and what was delivered’’.
Following the report’s release, councillor and finance committee chairman Raf Manji said instead of properly repairing infrastructure damage, the Crown got the network working again.
‘‘Now the problem with that and the problem for the ratepayer and the public, as we’ll see during the Long Term Plan process, is that we have a very, very long tail of infrastructure costs going out over the next 10 to 30 years.
‘‘The public needs to be clear that’s why their rates keep going up – because we are still paying for the repairs post-earthquake, which were promised by the Government to be funded properly and clearly we were shortchanged,’’ he said at the time.
Dalziel said the council would ask the public during consultation if it had ‘‘the right balance between rates affordability and how quickly we get this work done’’.
‘‘We could do some of this work over a shorter time frame than we have set out in the draft LTP, but to do that we either have to defer or drop some projects to free up funding or we have to increase rates more.’’
The draft LTP included a summary of a Deloitte report that showed the cost to date of the earthquakes, as well as the predicted ongoing cost.
‘‘Deloitte calculates the total cost of the earthquakes will be more than $10b,’’ Dalziel said.
‘‘That is a significant burden for a city the size of Christchurch and helps to explain why we have had to prioritise some things over others.’’
The draft LTP is the council’s plan for work such as roading improvements, flood risk reduction, funding new facilities, completing cycleways, maintaining and renewing water infrastructure, and maintaining parks, riverbanks and coastal areas.
The plan will be considered by councillors during a meeting on Wednesday, before going out for consultation.