Raj Suppiah (left), Tararua District Council chief financial officer, district Mayor Tracey Collis and John Whittal, Audit New Zealand.
Raj Suppiah (left), Tararua District Council chief financial officer, district Mayor Tracey Collis and John Whittal, Audit New Zealand.
Audit New Zealand's John Whittal was smiling at last week's Tararua District Council meeting. He had just signed off on the council's Long Term Plan, which he said was a good, quality succinct document.
"It ticked all the boxes," Mr Whittal said.
For councillor Peter Johns, this was a significant moment.
"This is the first time I've been on council and we've had a clean document, the first time we've come through an audit with no issues," he said. Raj Suppiah, council's chief financial officer, said the audit process had been very smooth, with connectivity and resilience key points.
Tararua District mayor Tracey Collis, left, Raj Suppiah, chief financial officer and Mark Maxwell, council's economic development and communications manager, discussing the long term plan.
''For me that's very important. We haven't leveraged our balance sheet to capacity, and we are not underfunding this generation and then coming back to future generations.
''We need to make sure we are ahead of the game and have resilience."
Mr Suppiah said the ongoing challenge was to maintain the balance between prudent investment and keeping rates affordable.
Council proposes an average rates increase of 3.5 per cent for the first three years of the LTP, which compares extremely well with many other councils throughout New Zealand, including many of our neighbouring councils.
"We are looking to provide services while still keeping rates affordable," Mr Suppiah said.
"It's a huge balancing act."
The rates increase is split into 2.4 per cent for mandatory requirements, the minimum rates funding required for council to maintain current levels of service and to meet increasing compliance requirements. The additional 1.1 per cent is discretionary spending to increase service levels as a result of community feedback.
"There needs to be an increased level of service, with increased levels of capital investment. If we don't do this Tararua may fall behind," Mr Suppiah said.
And while the overall rates increases are higher than the previous year, if council hadn't applied rates smoothing, the actual rates increase, to meet the capital work in year one of the long term plan, would have been 7.39 per cent.
However, given the council's strong balance sheet and reserves modelling out to more than 30 years, council has been able to smooth the rates while still being compliant and prudent, Mr Suppiah said.
Mark Maxwell, council's economic development and communications manager, said the prudent rates increase was a confident-booster for anyone considering moving to Tararua who may want to invest.
''Now the important thing is to hear from our community," he said.
"We often hear from people who don't agree with things, but we also want to hear from people who agree and if people have something new to say, we'd love to hear from them at one of our community street meetings."
Have your say:
* From April 16 to 20 TDC councillors and key council staff will hold barbecue street meetings across seven Tararua towns.
* On April 23 and 30 the team will be in Pongaroa and Herbertville. * The street meetings will run from 11.30am to 1.30pm.
* The Long Term Plan document will be available for consultation, with key council staff at the barbecues to discuss issues targeted for each town.
* The formal consultation period runs from April 9 to May 11. Details of venues and dates will be available on the Council website from April 9: www.tararuadc.govt.nz/ltp