Close vote to extend annual plan timeline

Tararua District Council’s deadline for adopting the Long-term Plan came up for some heavy discussion at a recent meeting.

In the March meeting, councillors resolved to adopt an unaudited Long-term Plan (LTP) by June 30, 2024, but management had since advised that this was not going to be possible.

An extraordinary meeting was called in which group manager of corporate Raj Suppiah asked the council to extend the timeline to July 31.

He told councillors this would provide enough time for auditors to firstly work alongside the council to review the LTP before it went out to consultation, and then audit the final document from mid-June.

He said that by doing the review they are “giving management and the governance team some assurance that the consultation document and the information going out to the community had a level of scrutiny”.

However, some councillors brought up concerns around the possibility the audit would not be completed in time for the LTP to be adopted by July 31.

It was noted that if such a situation occurred, it could trigger Section 50 of the Local Government Rating Act.

Under the act, councils must give ratepayers 14 days upon receiving a rates invoice to make payment.

Councillor Scott Gilmore explained his concerns, saying it would open up ratepayers to a risk of the council needing to use Section 50.

“Assuming there’ll be a rates increase, the implications of that is that our rates will not be evenly spread to our ratepayers.”

He said that by not meeting the deadline, the council would have to use last year’s rates resolution, so any increase would have to be paid in three quarters instead of over the financial year.

Councillor Sharon Wards also expressed concerns the council was now looking at a third option within two weeks.

She said she was all for helping to manage the risk, but was concerned more risk was being added.

“I don’t want us to be sitting here in three months’ time and we’re looking at another resolution of shifting a timeframe again.”

Chief executive Bryan Nicholson said the shift was to do with the availability of auditors.

He said there was a lot of information in the LTP that the council didn’t have confidence in, but that was not unique to Tararua District.

“It seems to be a common theme with LTPs this year in other regions, where there is so much uncertainty with changes to Government and changes around other decisions still to be made. There is a bit of uncertainty and less confidence in what we would all like to have.”

The council voted in favour of extending the adoption of the LTP to July 31 after Mayor Tracey Collis used her casting vote.

The LTP will be out for community consultation from May 1-31.