City rates to go up by 7.95 pc
People in the greatest need will find solace in some of the spending decisions that will trigger a rates rise of just under 8 per cent for Palmerston North next year.
Deputy mayor Aleisha Rutherford said that while the focus of budgets for the next decade was weighted towards investing in infrastructure, they also responded to people’s needs.
The committee of council spent two days debating what spending should stay, what should go, and what should be added after considering more than 700 submissions, ending late yesterday.
Councillor Karen Naylor was the only one to vote against a recommendation that the council should adopt the 7.95 per cent rates rise later in June.
She said the council went out for consultation with a plan that was not able to be funded or afforded by the community and had only made it worse.
Councillor Lew Findlay said he was disappointed with the result, which involved rates increases of about 8 per cent for each of the next three years.
He said one thing he was sure of was that superannuation payments would not go up 24 per cent in three years and he did not know how much longer people on fixed incomes could live with such increases.
Mayor Grant Smith said the process had been challenging but he could not see where the council could have made cuts to infrastructure spending without adding significant risks.
He said the proposed rates rise remained lower than that of metropolitan councils including Hamilton, Dunedin, Wellington, Auckland and Tauranga.
Councillor Zulfiqar Butt said he was satisfied with the final budget in light of last year’s decisions to cut the rates rise to below 2 per cent as the city emerged from the Covid-19 lockdown.
The city’s newest councillor, Orphee Mikalad, described it as an investment budget that struck a good balance.
Rutherford said that while the rates rise would be difficult for some, it would also pay for many projects that would benefit the most vulnerable people in the community.
Those people-centred projects included agreeing to pay council staff the living wage ($290,000); providing more social housing ($7 million more than the draft plan); capping rents for council tenants at 25 per cent of benefits or superannuation ($140,000); investigating free bus trips for certain groups; removing library fines for children ($40,000); investigating provision of a free, monthly rubbish bag for people on low incomes; and starting the conversation about provision of a night shelter for homeless people.
In decisions on the final day of deliberations, the council also increased lines of grants funding – an extra $40,000 a year for sports events partners; $30,000 a year for community small grants; and $80,000 for strategic priority grants.
Arapuke Forest Park will get an extra $20,000 to help pay for a shelter at the car park, and $10,000 a year for mountain bike trail maintenance; the Green Corridors programme will get an extra $30,000 a year to increase maintenance and planting for the 42 hectares in the project; and $50,000 would kick-start the Massey Foundation’s plans to develop a botanical garden between Turitea and the Manawatu¯ River.