Whanganui district councillors met this week to approve the Long Term Plan consultation document. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui district councillors have had their say on a potential rates increase of 10.6 per cent, and none are happy about it.
The council green-lighted public consultation on its next 10-year Long Term Plan (LTP), which also tackles rates for 2024/25, at a meeting this week.
Councillor Charlie Anderson was the only elected member present to vote against the consultation document.
He said he hoped the upcoming kerbside recycling service would have been kicked into touch, rather than the possible closure of the Whanganui East Pool.
“Those that recycle already do it, and those that don’t won’t.”
Councillor Michael Law questioned whether, as suggested in the consultation document, keeping the pool open would cost ratepayers $420,000 a year and closing the aviary would save them $190,000.
“This LTP for our council, and for a lot of councils across the country, highlights just how critical this situation is becoming for local government around New Zealand,” he said.
“[That will cost] $10.5 million per annum - costing the ratepayer another $56 per annum - but it’s money well spent.”
The consultation document proposes an annual $1.05m increase in rates for core infrastructure for the next 10 years.
Vinsen said his biggest concern was the $55m provision for a hotel and carpark, with nothing set aside for emergency housing.
The consultation document said that would cost each property $30 a year from 2025/26 to 2038/39, “after which the returns from the hotel and carpark will start to offset rates”.
Councillor Ross Fallen said Whanganui was facing the largest rates increase for more than a generation, but the council was not immune to rising costs and it did not rate for profit.
“There should be lots - thousands, maybe - of submissions, because that tells us what [members of the public] think and feel,” he said.
That is part of $1.5m in savings already identified by the council, including disestablishing the Youth Council and discontinuing the council’s digital strategy implementation resource.
“Everyone has to take some pain here,” Baker-Hogan said.
She said housing and homelessness were “pretty much silent” in the LTP and still constituted big issues.
Council chief executive David Langford said housing was not in the consultation document because the council was “actively pursuing it via other channels”.
He said a new proposal would be discussed at the council’s upcoming strategy and policy meeting.
“We had about $4m provisioned for housing [in the last LTP]; this proposal could see us pursuing a house-building programme over the next decade worth in excess of $300m.”
Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multi-media journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present, his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.