Serious questions need to be asked about Hawke's Bay Regional Council's draft Ten Year Plan, which is a majority but not a unanimous council position.
Firstly the 19-21 per cent prospective rate increase. While the proponents say that this will be a small cost increase for urban citizens, it will be very substantial for many commercial and rural ratepayers – and the percentage increase is without precedent in Hawke's Bay local government history. It is also the first time in my 32-year experience that I have seen a council make no attempt at prioritisation or minimisation of costs or programmes. Quite to the contrary it seems that every proposal by staff or controlling councillors has been endorsed.
The council's slick and expensive sales campaign says that it has done nothing to improve the environment and "we have to do things now before it is too late".
That assertion is not credible, when you consider the council's existing $55 million annual budget and its 225 hard working, highly qualified and committed staff who are doing excellent work. Remember last year's 10 per cent rates increase (ongoing), included $1m per annum (with additional leveraged funding from central government), to address five environmental "hot spots" across the region, with good results already.
Does it make sense to regionalise Civil Defence funding and operation's? Yes, but does it have to happen in year one of a 10-year plan? Conversely, does it make sense to dismantle regional tourism by reducing funding by half over three years. This is lunacy, messing with success and dismantling an industry as important to our region as apple or winegrowing. Again, in my 32 years' experience, HB Tourism is an unqualified success compared with the many expensive failures of the past. I suspect the real motivation is to disguise a rate increase of over 21 per cent if there is to be no cutting back of luxury projects or delaying projects to spread the load.
