Wanting to pay his regional council rates early Whanganui man Robert Peake was alarmed and annoyed to find his projected rates had increased 53 per cent.
He was looking at the Rating Information Database on the Horizons Regional Council website. It showed that $121.22 of the increase was a new charge for the Matarawa River Management Scheme.
Peake queried the council, and was told no one else was complaining. He wasn't told that what he was looking at was interim information. Rates had yet to be finalised, and no invoices had been sent out.
Horizons' chief financial officer Leanne Macdonald said it was an error in the figures used that brought the cost for the scheme to $121.22 a year for each urban Whanganui property. It should have been much less.
Earlier in the year the council had said the amount would be 74 cents a year per $100,000 worth of a property's capital value. For Peake that would amount to about $3.74, Macdonald said.