Chch’s 5 big budget issues
Rising rates, rough roads, love-them-orhate-them cycleways and the famous ‘‘no-mow’’ policy. Nick Truebridge looks at five much-debated topics in the Christchurch City Council’s draft Long Term Plan.
RATE HIKES AND A CATHEDRAL LEVY
The Christchurch City Council says its focus is on keeping the average rates rise below 5 per cent. Yet the average rise next financial year is pegged at 5.72 per cent, with
5.5 per cent (or $2.64 a week for a house valued just over $500,000) mooted in 2019-20.
Deputy Mayor Andrew Turner concedes the rise is more than some councillors would like and
Press columnist Mike Yardley this week pointed out the result of unrelenting increases year-onyear.
‘‘Last week, I referred to how my rates bill has exploded by 83 per cent since 2007 – now on-track to spiral to 135 per cent in five more years,’’ he wrote.
Rates increases proposed in the council’s draft Long Term Plan (LTP) – effectively the city’s
10-year budget – sit below some pre-earthquake rates hikes.
The seven years before the earthquakes included average rates increases of 8.20 per cent in
2006-07 and 7.58 per cent in 2008-09. As for the Christ Church Cathedral levy?
Councillor Yani Johanson expects the council to cop flak as it asks ratepayers to fund its $10 contribution to cathedral restoration.
The levy will cost each household $7.19 each year for 10 years.
Last year, the majority of Christchurch residents who submitted on the city council grant to help restore the cathedral did not want ratepayers’ money used.
More than 1000 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.
‘‘We’ve got our own [damaged] heritage buildings, which, again, we’ve just released . . . a number of heritage buildings that have been put on hold due to a lack of funding,’’ Johanson says.
Cr Sara Templeton calls it a ‘‘controversial’’ distraction from the ‘‘really big issues’’ like cycleways. ‘‘Last year we were supposed to decide on whether or not to do the $10 million [Cathedral grant] and how to do it at the time,’’ Templeton says.
She says the final decision should have been made then, not waited until the LTP.
CYCLEWAYS
Cycleways have polarised the city in recent years.
The council’s latest LTP shows it proposes taking another 10 years to finish the network, which will cost an additional $90m. Once expected to cost the city $162m, the cost of the 13 cycleways now sits at
$252m.
Councillor Aaron Keown says the budget has gone crazy, but he can stomach the increase because of cycling’s health benefits.
Templeton, a vocal supporter of cycleways, is ‘‘really disappointed’’ by the delays.
Ten thousand more people will work in the central city in the next three years, Templeton says, and
83 per cent will travel alone in cars if nothing changes.
‘‘That’s over 8000 more cars in the central city and, as well as the increased congestion, we simply cannot afford to build another 10 Lichfield St car parking buildings at $32m each to store them all in,’’ she says.
‘‘What a lot of people don’t look at is the cost of not doing it, so they’re actually much better economic value to the city than if we didn’t do it.
‘‘We’ve spent very little on cycleways already and the numbers of cyclists is picking up all the time, so they need to be brought back and they need to be done sooner.’’
In 2016, the completion date of the cycleways was pushed out from 2020 to 2022. The draft LTP now proposes putting them off until 2028.
That is 14 years after the council committed to building them within five years – and puts completion of the proposed stadium ahead of finishing the cycleways.
PARKS AND GREEN SPACES
Is the council’s much-maligned ‘‘no-mow’’ policy a goner?
Mayor Lianne Dalziel says the council is ‘‘reviewing’’ the policy, which aims to improve water quality by reducing the amount of rubbish, grass and vegetation getting into the city’s rivers.
‘‘However, it has meant the riverbanks have got out of control with grasses and weeds,’’ she says in her introduction to the council’s latest LTP.
‘‘We will be making changes and working with local communities about planting the riverbanks to create the same protection while still allowing access to the rivers.’’
The council says this LTP prioritises work to maintain riverbanks and parks. It has 1114 parks to maintain and manage and reserves covering nearly 9000 hectares. Their total value is $800m.
The state of the city’s parks was a big issue for the council last year, with Dalziel saying Christchurch needs to ‘‘look a lot better’’ if it wants to keep its Garden City label.
Last year, the council struggled to meet ratepayers’ demands to keep parks maintained, with staff saying they are ‘‘hamstrung’’ because only three rangers are employed for the whole city.
A report last May showed, on average, the council received 244 park maintenance requests from ratepayers every month over the past two years, but 60 jobs were completed each month.
As well as prioritising maintenance, improvements to parks are planned, such as new playgrounds for Scarborough and Risingholme parks and more work on a new turf at St Albans Park.
In total, $26.6m in capital expenditure is programmed for parks, heritage and coastal areas in 2018-19.
Johanson believes the council has to do the basics better and says maintenance requires ongoing monitoring.
‘‘The whole general state of tidiness in the city is going to be an ongoing issue we need to pay really close attention to.
‘‘It’s really important that by spending a little bit of money we can actually save a lot by getting the community involved in those planting days.’’
ROADS AND FOOTPATHS
Roads and footpaths aren’t the sexiest pieces of city infrastructure, but the council has shown a willingness to get creative with how it funds them.
It likes the look of super city Auckland’s fuel tax initiative, saying in its LTP consultation document that it thinks other local authorities should get the same opportunity.
A fuel tax, it says, would raise at least $15m annually for the city and help accelerate road repairs.
For now this appears to be a council pipe dream, given the Government’s refusal to allow a fuel tax elsewhere in its first term. Still, that is not stopping council from re-doing and renewing our roads and footpaths.
In the budget is $10.6m per year to pay 140 staff, $30.2m per year for maintenance and $25.3m has been budgeted for renewals in the 2019 financial year.
It plans to put off renewing wastewater infrastructure to free up funding for roads.
Councillors have repeatedly claimed Christchurch was shortchanged during the Scirt programme to repair its broken pipelines. The council sticks to that stance in this LTP.
It says Scirt failed to complete ‘‘all the necessary repairs to horizontal infrastructure because the cost share agreement did not cover all earthquake related damage – just that which was required to get the network back in action’’.
Cr Phil Clearwater says promises made after the 2011 earthquake led to unrealistic public expectations. The challenge facing the council was ‘‘enormous’’. ‘‘Given those challenges and the costs, compared with other cities Christchurch has been doing remarkably well.’’
The council says it will prioritise roadworks, but does not appear to be in a rush to head back underground. It says it will ‘‘not be able to address all the issues’’ with underground pipes. The council’s consultation document concedes wastewater assets will decay, increasing wastewater overflows.
THE STADIUM
What will become of the city’s vision for a central city stadium? This LTP offers hope and uncertainty.
Funding is earmarked for the project, with $253m budgeted between 2022-23 and 2024-25.
The council says there is ‘‘uncertainty’’ about how that, and the Metro Sports Facility, might happen.
Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Megan Woods has not ruled out combining Christchurch’s metro sports facility and multi-use stadium, despite a KPMG recommending against the option.
She said the report’s findings were not enough to rule out the colocation idea and she needed more information. Watch this space.
‘‘We will be making changes and working with local communities about planting the riverbanks to create the same protection while still allowing access to the rivers.’’
Mayor Lianne Dalziel