Ratepayer representatives Bruce McCabe, Keith Hay and Ross Goudie are worried people won't be able to afford the rates proposed by the council. Photo/ Alisha Evans
Ratepayer representatives Bruce McCabe, Keith Hay and Ross Goudie are worried people won't be able to afford the rates proposed by the council. Photo/ Alisha Evans
Western Bay of Plenty ratepayers are worried about the affordability of rates rises over the next decade.
But Mayor James Denyer says the council has done its best to keep the rates increases as low as possible.
The average rates increases over the next 10 years would be within the district council’s affordability benchmark of 9 per cent per year.
Core business included roading, providing drinking water, and maintaining sewerage and stormwater systems, McCabe said.
In his view: “[The council] is spending a lot of money on parks, coastal walkways, cycleways.”
McCabe said people needed to be able to afford their rent or mortgage, feed their families and have sufficient income.
He believed “all of those things are not being achieved through the rate increases that the council is proposing and people at the moment are hurting”.
Denyer said it was not up to ratepayer groups to decide what core business was.
Local government’s purpose was to improve the social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing of its community, he said.
The council’s “big spends” were what the ratepayer groups might call “core business”, Denyer said.
Western Bay of Plenty Mayor James Denyer. Photo / John Borren
This included the Katikati wastewater outfall pipe, which the council had budgeted $68 million from 2027 for replacement options. Another was building the $73m Te Puke Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Waihī Beach Community Board chairman Ross Goudie claimed the rate increases would double in 10 years.
Denyer said comparing rates increases to overall rates revenue was a “misleading way of looking at it” as it did not mean people’s rates would double.
In the first two years of the long-term plan, the proposed increases were 13.6 per cent then 10.44 per cent. For the remaining years, the increases would be between 7 per cent and 8.46 per cent.
All of local government was facing extraordinary pressures on rates due to rising inflation, interest rates, and insurance costs, Denyer said.
Western Bay’s proposed average rates increase of 13.6 per cent for 2025 was lower than the country’s average rates rise of 15 per cent, he said.
The council is consulting on two rates options for the 2024/25 financial year of the draft long-term plan.
A “preferred option” would see rates rise by an average of 13.6 per cent in the first year, with a cut in spending and some projects pushed out.
The second option is to keep the original timing from the previous long-term plan, but this would mean a 24.4 per cent rates increase in the first year.
There were 12 key projects the council was focusing on in the plan.
One was providing infrastructure for a ferry in Ōmokoroa. Previously, this would start in 2028 at a cost of $3m. Under the revised proposal, the project would begin in 2030, at a higher cost of $3.6m
The council was also looking to spend $1.95m on an adventure playground at TECT Park in 2025. This has been pushed out to 2029 with an estimated cost of $2.25m.
Western Bay of Plenty District Council has plans for an adventure playground at TECT Park, off SH36. Photo / George Novak
Projects added to the plan included a $3.55m community hub for Maketū in 2029 and spending $750,000 on a new library and service centre in Ōmokoroa in 2033.
Goudie said the council’s consultation placed too much emphasis on the first year of the plan.
The former Western Bay councillor said once the long-term plan was in place it was difficult to change, even though the council did an annual plan every year.
“They can’t do big renovations in an annual plan because they’re constrained by the long-term plan.”
However, Denyer said a new long-term plan was done every three years and the council could make adjustments through the annual plan.
“If conditions change, then we can be responsive to that.”
