South Waikato fees and charges on the up
Costs for pensioner housing, dog registrations and burials are set to increase significantly in the South Waikato, but an overall rates rise is yet to be decided.
The South Waikato District Council will begin the first phase of consultation for its Long-Term Plan (LTP) 2024-34 with a round of community consultation on its fees and charges for the coming year.
But, while charges for user-pays services such as pensioner housing will increase, costs to develop new subdivisions and commercial or industrial sites will decrease, according to the council’s draft Fees and Charges consultation document.
The council said rents for pensioner housing were currently around 55% of market rates, but “the cost of servicing and maintaining pensioner housing outweighs the rental income we receive from tenants”.
The council is proposing to increase rents to within 15% of market rates meaning rent for a one bedroom pensioner flat will go from $155 a week to $225 a week, and from $195 a week to $305 a week for a two bedroom flat.
And, while the cost of living is increasing for everyone across the country, the cost of dying in the South Waikato is also on the up.
The cost for a reserved adult burial plot in any of the South Waikato’s cemeteries will go from $605 to $870, and the cost to be buried in an unreserved adult plot would go from $675 to $1640.
“Council’s contractor prices have increased in line with these actual costs,” the council said, and “fees must increase so we don’t add additional burden to rates and ratepayers”.
“Our proposed fees are comparable with, and in many cases lower than, our neighbouring councils,” the council said.
Dog registration fees are also set to increase from $176 to $190 for urban dogs, and from $77 to $85 for rural dogs.
But, financial contributions (also known as development contributions) paid by developers when they start a project in the South Waikato will decrease significantly.
Roading contributions will drop from $4506 to $3861, reserves contributions also drop from $1749 to $949 and wastewater contributions drop from $7686 to $4534.
The council’s marketing and communications manager Kerry Fabrie said the council usually consulted on its LTP all at once, but “this year the LTP is delayed several months due to complexities caused by the changing legislation related to three waters”.
“So, the council is splitting the LTP consultation in to two rounds ... with the remaining LTP components around a month later.”
This is when South Waikato residents will get some idea of the council’s proposed rates increases for the next 10 years.
Fabrie said full LTP consultation was scheduled to start on Friday, May 3, and close on Friday, June 7.