Manawatū council takes 7.08% rates rise and key calls to public
In one of the few districts in New Zealand facing a single-digit rates increase, the Manawatū council has put forward a budget for the coming year its elected representatives are describing as balanced and well focused.
Councillors agreed to a 7.09% rates rise when it unanimously approved its draft long term plan for public feedback on Thursday. It has a clear emphasis on core infrastructure – water and roads – with a smattering of community projects, such as developing the Ōroua River Walkway from 2026, and a gradual refresh of the Feilding town centre ($5.6 million over 10 years).
In her introduction to the consultation document, mayor Helen Worboys acknowledged many residents were doing it tough, due to high interest rates and inflation. Due to higher levels of investment in previous years, Manawatū was in a favourable position where, unlike some councils, it would not need to cut services to maintain infrastructure that formed “the backbone of the district”.
At Thursday’s meeting deputy mayor Michael Ford said there had been a lot of hard work and compromise to achieve a “good balance”.
“Our rates rise, while I’d love it to be a bit lower, when we look around the country, ours will be among the lowest, and that’s excellent, but we’re not shutting up shop, we’re still growing. We’ve still got some growth projects, some new projects. Not a lot, but appropriate for the times we’re in.”
Councillor Stuart Campbell said he was proud of the draft plan. Manawatū hadn’t been short-sighted like many other councils and had rightly focused on infrastructure investment.
Consultation on the plan will begin March 27 and run for a month.
Feedback is being emphasised on four key issues: The closure or rebuilding of the Kowhai Park aviaries; rates differentials for roading; the mix of rates versus user charges for funding some activities; and how the community wants the cost of enforcing time-limited parking in the Feilding CBD shared between residential and business ratepayers.
On the latter, the council favours funding the annual $125,000 enforcement cost through general rates. But options where CBD businesses would front 25% or 100% of the cost through a targeted rate are also presented for feedback.
The introduction of time-restricted parking followed a decade of debate and angst over the perceived scarcity of customer parking – blamed on town workers leaving their cars in the spaces all day.
A decision to fund the installation of time limited parking signs was decided in late 2023, and the signs were set to be in place by the end of April.
The emphasis of enforcement was to increase turnover of car parks, not to deter the public from using them, Worboys said.
“We still want people to use the parking spaces that are available around the town centre. Our goal is to increase the turnover, so that there are more parks available closer to town for those that need them.”
The changes wouldn’t affect disabled car parks, and there would be varying time limits and locations across the town centre to allow high traffic and key drop-in businesses to have a faster turnover.
Longer stay areas remained for shopping, seeing a movie or having a haircut, and the strip of parks on Kimbolton Rd have been kept available for all day parking.