16.42% rates rise ‘disappointing’

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

From local democracy reporter Brendon McMahon:

A 16.42% rates hike by the West Coast Regional Council is "disappointing" but the council had little option, chairperson Peter Haddock says.

Much of the increase was due to the council having to carry all the costs of the Te Tai o Poutini Plan, ordered by the Government.

Rating for that is being doubled in 2023-24 to $1 million, with worse to come: the costs of the submissions hearing stage is expected to 'snowball' the overall cost to more than $5.7 million.

Meantime, the council has doubled Civil Defence and emergency management funding to more than $600,000 to meet its statutory responsibilities.

Until a few years ago, that was funded by each district council with National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) support.

Meantime, a fresh approach to the Government over helping cover the TTPP costs - given its trial run status for the regional plan framework set out in the RMA reform - had been agreed regionally.

"Hopefully we may get some relief from Government."

Despite knock-backs already after meetings with the Ministers of Environment and Local Government, "we've got a strategy to follow up," Haddock said.

The other elements pushing the rates increase above the 10% ceiling laid out in the 2021-31 long-term plan was the need for more flood protection investigation, Total Mobility subsidised transport, and increasing community resilience services.

Buller mayor Jamie Cleine said ratepayer funding the TTPP was "problematic" on a tiny rating base of about 15,000 properties throughout the West Coast.

The region needed the investment to complete the TTPP, given that the current three district plans it replaces are all due to expire.

At the same time, the wider benefit of the TTPP as the Government rolls out its new regional plans requirement also needed to be recognised, Cleine, a member of the TTPP Committee, said.

"We've written to the ministers again. That's the right thing to do; it's an imposition the Crown put on to us."

The TTPP Committee was also conscious of "the unknown" given an 18-month hearing process and likelihood of expensive litigation.

"We run the risk of making that a lot worse if we don't fund and run that properly."

A counter-argument is that district councils should start decreasing their rates because they no longer needed to fund their district plans with the regional council now doing the one district plan.

However, Cleine said districts still had to run their existing plans and provide technical support in formulating the new plan.

He said the workload of each district council planning department had actually increased due to the TTPP.

"During the formulation stage, I'd say the workload is considerably more for each district; each district has been part of a technical team working alongside the TTPP. That should change a little but down the track."

However, the West Coast was exposed to a raft of legislative change coinciding with the TTPP, and the region's size and the complexity of land activity compounded this.

"It's a vast area... a huge change in planning for what each district had before."

Westland mayor and TTPP member Helen Lash said they continued to tell the Government it was unfair to push the full cost on to ratepayers.

"We're being used as a guinea pig... it's only when you get through the process that you understand the costs," Lash said.

Wellington had not committed to changing its mindset yet and that had left the regional council with no option but to increase the rates.

"It's going to incur more costs. We've certainly not been flamboyant with the costs within it either," Lash said.

* Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air