‘No way to sugar-coat’ Gore’s rates increase
There may not be any blood on the floor with a 21.4% rates increase this year, but there soon will be unless some big cuts are made before next year’s increase, councillors have been told.
The Gore District Council is proposing a rates increase of 21.4%, saying the funding of local government in New Zealand is in dire need of being overhauled.
A council meeting on Tuesday was interim chief executive Stephen Parry’s last. He said the budget was ‘’abnormal’’ and the most challenging one the council had negotiated in his 22 years in the position.
Councillors were grim while discussing the increase, with nearly all saying the council was facing considerable challenges. Government regulations were being forced on it, there were increased insurance, interest and inflationary costs, and depreciation of assets to pay for.
Deputy mayor Keith Hovell called it an ‘’appalling increase,’’ Cr Glenys Dickson said it was ‘’not the result any of them wanted,’’ Cr Richard McPhail said it was ‘’unavoidable’’ because the council’s infrastructure was old, Cr Robert McKenzie said there was no way to sugar-coat the situation, and Cr Stringer said councillors had inherited a ‘’poisoned chalice’’.
But they had some ideas of how the council could ‘’cut its cloth’’ before next year’s rates increase, such as selling land, reducing services, moving to user pays for some services, amalgamation with other councils, and
“The chickens are coming home to roost, and as always, it is ratepayers having to foot the bill.”
Sam Warren, Taxpayers’ Union
sharing services with them.
Cr Stewart MacDonnell said the council owned 95 buildings and the district’s airport, for which it faced a bill of $250,000 to reseal the runway in the next year. He suggested the council could reduce its asset base and reduce overheads.
All councillors agreed that the way councils were funded needed to change, and it would remain a member of LGNZ so it could lobby the Government for a better way forward.
The proposed cuts meant the Gore Youth Council would be recessed for a year, interim chief executive Stephen Parry told the meeting.
McKenzie told councillors the council was facing debt of $61 million next year.
At the council’s monthly meeting in February, it voted to proceed to apply for consents to Environment Southland for wastewater upgrades which could cost $77m, though some councillors voted against the motion, saying the council could not afford the projects.
The Taxpayers’ Union referred to Gore’s rates increase as a ‘’shocker’’, in a press release on Tuesday, with spokesperson Sam Warren saying clearly something was ‘’very broken’’ for councils across New Zealand.
“A culture of historic wasteful spending throughout local government, combined with soaring costs, has resulted in an proposed average increase of 15% across the county. Sadly, Gore residents are well above this average.
“The chickens are coming home to roost, and as always, it is ratepayers having to foot the bill. The council must now take a ruthless approach to cutting spending, eliminating any expenditure that is not on core services in order to protect ratepayers from an unaffordable rates hike in the middle of a costof-living crisis.”
Consultation on the Gore district’s 2024/25 Annual Plan would start on Monday, and mayor Ben Bell encouraged members of the community to talk to councillors about the proposed rates increase and ideas they had to trim the budgets.