Napier mayor Kirsten Wise explains rates increases and what services they pay for

Napier mayor Kirsten Wise. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Rates are being set by councils across the country. Most of them will propose significant increases to their community.

Rates are necessary to keep communities running. They are the price of admission to any city, town, rural area or region.

Some of the things Napier rates pay for are roads, parks, water services, waste and recycling, animal control, libraries and cemeteries.

We set rates using a series of levers. Each of them has effects and impacts as we slide the weighting up and down.

For example, one of the levers is levels of service. The higher the level of service, the more cost involved. Weekly kerbside rubbish collection, instead of monthly, for instance, is a higher level of service.

Time is also a lever. To keep costs down in the year ahead we can push projects further out into the future. They will still happen - and we will still need to invest in them - just not now.

Other levers are things like whether we make facilities user-pays and how much we borrow, money we can use now but will have to pay back over time.

When we first started looking at the year ahead in Napier, we were faced with a rates increase of over 40 per cent.

This was to achieve everything in the plan, in the time proposed, to the levels of service our community wants and deserves, with the resources we have available.

An increase that high is simply not doable so we had to adjust the levers.

By increasing user-pays fees and charges, paying for some costs with loans, and moving some costs to future years we’ve got to a place where we are looking at a percentage increase in the low 20s with 2 per cent specifically for improving resilience. The proposed increase doesn’t include funding any new activities.

Our priorities for the next few years are to get the basics bedded in, to put down strong foundations that we can build our future on. We need to keep up with infrastructure repairs and renewals.

We need to upgrade and replace playgrounds. We need to make sure our existing public places and green spaces are well cared for. We need to maintain our facilities.

Rates are your annual investment in your neighbourhood, your city and your district. About $8 a week pays for roads and footpaths and $8 pays for flushing toilets and the wastewater network.

Another $6 pays for drinking water and $10 pays for libraries, sports grounds, cemeteries, theatres and museums.

Your rates are only part of the money we use to keep the city running. We also use loans and income from our facilities.

One of the things we are looking at is how to make some of our facilities financially self-sufficient.

We also want to ensure the money in our care is making money itself through savvy financial investments.

As we set rates through the Three-Year Plan process, the most important thing you can do is give us your thoughts through our submissions process.

We need your views on what’s important, what our future needs, what our levels of service should be.

We know that increasing rates is a pain in the pocket and it’s certainly not something we want to do, but we do have to keep moving forward.

We do need to recover fully from the cyclone, we do need to keep investing in infrastructure, we do need to keep our facilities maintained.

Council works for you, the community, and we want your voice loud and clear when we make decisions.

Our Three-Year Plan community consultation will open on March 25.

This will be your chance to tell us what you think about our plans and priorities for the next three years. Keep an eye out for more details in your letterbox once the consultation opens.