Mike Cranstone

The submission process is not a job for the faint-hearted, so I am grateful to have the likes of Tim Matthews, on our executive, and Coralee, our regional policy adviser, to help get the submissions together.

For Whanganui District Council (WDC) and Horizons Regional Council (Horizons), rates have been forecast to increase by around 5 per cent and 8 per cent respectively.

These are considerable average increases, which we know means even bigger increases for many in the rural zone (driven up by the council reliance on property value as a proxy for ratepayer contributions).

We will be reminding the councils about this inequity and asking that they more fairly shift contributions to those who will directly benefit from council services.

Our submissions also step through the various projects put forward by WDC and Horizons, asking that the niceto-have, non-essential projects are stalled until council can address some of the more urgent work, which for Horizons includes implementing the Government’s Essential Freshwater Package.

Increasing costs to implement Central Government regulatory changes, coupled with the ongoing impact of Covid-19 are untimely challenges for councils.

We appreciate that, for many councils, the pressure to invest in new and upgraded infrastructure while also maintaining existing infrastructure, is forcing tough conversations to be had about nice-to-have services compared with core services.

For most of us rural ratepayers, this conversation is long overdue.

Rangitikei District Council (RDC). is also proposing a higher than normal average rates increase of around 7 per cent, which, for many pastoral farms, will mean increases of 25 per cent. A massive increase despite no additional services or benefits.

Federated Farmers will therefore be asking the council how it can justify this level of increase, given that rates are a charge for services, and are supposed to reflect the access to, and benefit derived by ratepayers from council services.

This is a key principle, reinforced in 2019 by the Productivity Commission and a key provision in s.101 of the Local Government Act 2002 that sets out funding principles for local authorities.

Feds are also concerned to see that RDC is proposing to reduce the amount of rates recovered by the Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC), from $610 currently, to $500.

Federated Farmers considers the UAGC to be a fair way for councils to rate for services that provide an indistinguishable amount of benefit across ratepayer groups.

Higher use of UAGCs also reduces reliance on the property value general rate as a funding mechanism and flattens the distribution of rates bills between high to low value properties.

In these turbulent times, financial constraint is a key discipline.

Every household and business have their wish-list of projects, and councils should also and have the fortitude to make tough decisions when allocating spending from what should be a fixed income. ■