Set for big, mostly popular, backtrack

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The council is set to make a major backtrack on its approach to the Long-Term Plan (LTP) which will repair its position with regard to wastewater treatment and disposal commitments, and rile those who accuse it of fiscal profligacy.

There was consternation when the council moved from three years of a 2 percent cap on average rates rises to a 5 percent cap, as it prepared to consult on the 2018-2028 LTP. It also hiked its debt limit from $55 million to $85m last year, and then $105m from 2022.

The new financial strategy was introduced to cover major infrastructure projects over the life of the LTP, in particular addressing community priorities in the areas of roading, wastewater, stormwater and flood control, and was labelled “5 percent to thrive”. There was plenty of support for this, as well as concern over a hiking rates burden.

It was a maximum 5 percent, though, with actual forecast rises of 4.89 percent, 4.29, 3.22, 4.41 and 4.02 over the first half of the plan.

That “buffer” for 5 percent-maximum rates hikes goes out the window (along with the $85m debt limit, breached by an estimated $6m in year three of the LTP), if a staff recommendation to fast-track the $24.4m phase one wastewater treatment project is adopted at tomorrow’s full council meeting.

And it will be, because this is a political move in response to iwi disgust, technical advisory upset and the angst of the four councillors on the wastewater management committee, over the organisation’s attempt to slow-boat its wastewater treatment and disposal commitments. The council has listened and apparently decided it was wrong to demote this project, for affordability reasons, down its planning timelines.

While the about-turn will be widely supported by a community that wants to stop pumping treated wastewater into Turanganui-a-Kiwa/Poverty Bay, rating affordability concerns will be heightened.

It will be incumbent on the council to continue to attract significant external funding and to tighten its belt where it can, to limit coming rates rises — and to also do what it can to encourage business (for productivity/wage and employment gains) and housing development (in a tight, rising property market).