New rating system: Changes coming for Napier City ratepayers

Napier Mayor Kirsten Wise and council investment and funding manager Garry Hrustinsky at a public rates policies consultation meeting in November. Photo / File

Targeted rates for those who create more stormwater, and a new rate for properties considered rural.

Napier City Council today completed a revenue and policy review process by adopting rating structure changes that are set to come into force from July this year.

As part of a process spanning three years, with local elections in 2019 having brought in several new councillors midstream, changes to the Revenue and Financing Policy, Rating Policy, Rates Remissions Policy and Rates Postponement Policy were proposed in 2020 to address historic anomalies and better reflect Napier's current residential, commercial and rural zones.

There were seven weeks of community consultation, public meetings, notices to each ratepayer of individual impacts of proposals, and 540 public submissions, leading to a three-day hearing last week in which almost 30 people presented in-person.

Council deliberations extended from Friday to a 1hr 40min meeting which finalised the decision, amid Mayor Kirsten's concession that not everyone would be happy, although the council had worked hard to listen, and accommodate concerns.

The main proposals consulted on were to change the way the General Rate was calculated for each property, including reducing General Rates categories from six to three and changing the percentage weighting of some categories to provide a simpler and more consistent approach to rates.

Additionally, it was proposed that the Stormwater charge be removed from General Rates and instead a new Stormwater Targeted Rate be introduced.

Based on the feedback, the council amended its original proposal to have four categories of Residential/Other, Commercial and Industrial, and Rural, as well as Rural Residential, which not been in the original proposal.

Additionally, council voted to apply a lower weighting of 90 per cent to the Rural Residential category, compared to 100 per cent for the Residential/Other category in which Rural Residential had been included.

Wise said Rural Residential had been introduced as a transitional category, adding: "We plan to consult with our community on whether to use land value or capital value as a basis for rating properties in the future."

Also debated was the merit of increasing the Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC), a fixed charge for all ratepayers, of $375 per property. Currently set at 20 per cent total rates revenue it will increase to 22 per cent ($383 per property) as a means of balancing impact.

Other changes differing from the original proposal include reducing the weighting of the Commercial and Industrial category from 268.09 per cent to 260 per cent (originally intended to be 250 per cent).

Wise said all proposals sought to strike a balance between addressing ratepayers' concerns and smoothing out the complex historical rating categories inherited when Napier and part of Hawke's Bay County merged in local Government reorganisation in 1989.