Waikato District rate rise revealed, but can you influence it?
Leaders in the Waikato district have questioned just how much say residents have over council decisions as they look to take a 13.75% rates rise to the public.
The debate came up during a formerly-closed workshop that was held to discuss the enhanced annual plan, which is the option council has chosen to sit as a place-holder for the delayed long term plan.
The proposed rate increase created a fair bit of back and forth conversation as corporate planning manager Nicole Hubbard presented the plan on Tuesday.
The main concerns surrounded the impact the increase would have on communities, how effective the proposed consultation process would be, and whether council would actually take on the feedback they received.
Te Kauwhata ward chair John Cunningham said he’s received frustrated feedback regarding consultation processes.
“I’ve been getting feedback from the Te Kauwhata community, and they’re sick and tired of consultation where nothing changes. Telling people what you’re doing, and setting up meetings and workshops is good. People are interested in what changes will be made, or whether it will just be council in their fortress, on their own, telling people what’s happening.”
“The language I’m hearing is that things are fixed.”
Councillor Marlene Raumati echoed Cunningham’s concerns.
“Are we interested in what our communities have to say, and will their points of view make a difference? Or are we just ticking boxes, and just going ahead with it anyway? There are so many people that are going to be so sorely impacted by this. And we can’t explain to them what we’ve been discussing in the past year in ten minutes orso.
“But we’ve got our seniors who are on fixed incomes. They’re not going to cope. Some of them can’t even afford to buy food now, so they go to food banks. We’ve also got families on single incomes.”
Councillor David Whyte suggested a part of the communication strategy should be showing communities the reality; that they can have lower rates, or they can have all the current services, but they can’t have both.
Councillor Mike Keir said the rate increase was necessary, but that going forward council needs to “get smarter” about how it operates, to avoid more of these kinds of hikes.
Mayor Jacqui Church addressed the concerns, and agreed that the consultation process needed to be genuine and thorough.
“I believe that we need to be informing our communities of some of the complexities we face in our council, so they will be best informed and then they can bring informed decisions back to us,” Church said. “This is biting the bullet. But if we don’t bite the bullet, and other councils have done this in the past, where they put low rates in and then the next year or two or three years they have to put more rates in to try and catch up.”
The consultation period for the enhanced annual plan will run from March 25 to April 26.