Hastings rate increase comes during ‘challenging economic conditions’

Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst.

By Sandra Hazlehurst, Hastings Mayor

OPINION

With rates notices starting to be sent out, people will be seeing the impact of our 19% rate increase adopted in June as part of our Long Term Plan 2024-2034.

In my 14 years on council, we’ve never faced such challenging economic conditions as we are currently experiencing – in large part due to the national and global post-Covid environment, and locally the impact of recovering from one of our district’s biggest natural disasters.

We’re not alone – all councils across the country are contending with ongoing high inflation, insurance cost increases, increased interest costs on our borrowings, and rising cost of labour and materials such as pipes and bitumen.

For our district, those increasing costs are coupled with the big bill to pay for our Cyclone Gabrielle recovery. We will need to borrow about $170 million to repair and rebuild the bridges, roads and culverts that were destroyed and are essential for the economic and social wellbeing of our community.

We have also committed $50m to the Category 3 properties’ Voluntary Buy Out programme and it is estimated a further $10m is required to repair water infrastructure and parks damaged by the cyclone.

It’s an enormous task, but we are making good progress with the support of central government. It was very exciting to see the rebuild of Chrystal Culvert in Tutira completed this month – it’s very important that our farming communities and others have sound, reliable access again.

This recovery work comes on top of our commitment to maintain and enhance the many assets and services the council provides that are essential for our residents now and into the future.

This includes our three waters (drinking/storm/wastewater) infrastructure and operations; waste services; maintaining and improving our city centre and green spaces; providing facilities such as libraries and pools, sports facilities and grounds and public buildings; and regulatory services such as resource and building consents and animal control.

All of these services contribute to the ongoing wellbeing and quality of life for our community, but we are acutely aware of the financial pressures people are facing across all areas of life.

We are working hard to identify cost savings wherever we can without impacting our services, and we are also pausing further investment in areas such as Splash Planet development, the Tōmoana showgrounds, new playgrounds, cycling and walking initiatives and new events.

One important area we have been focused on in recent years has been the revitalisation of our city centre – activity our community told us they wanted to see happen, including our magnificent Toitioi – Hawke’s Bay Arts and Events centre redevelopment.

The results to date have been fantastic – we get amazing feedback about our city centre from locals and visitors to our district and we look forward to continuing this work in conjunction with our private partners.

With spring approaching, anticipation is building for the warmer weather and our wonderful annual Blossom Festival on September 21, when we can all gather together in the city and enjoy the extra vibrancy and increased hospitality offerings our investment to date has enabled.