The council had called on staff to aim for a zero rate increase and a council meeting yesterday heard through hard work by staff and council workshops they had managed to do exactly that - deliver the same revenue for the forthcoming 2026-27 year. It had originally been proposed to have a rate rise of 8.7%.
At yesterday’s meeting, councillor Gary Kelliher asked chief executive Richard Saunders how the zero rate rise had been achieved - whether it was done through meeting efficiencies and finding savings which the council had asked for.
"Or was it an opportunistic situation which arose through delaying work, that rates had been gathered for? Because that will come back to us and be a cost," he said.
Mr Saunders said it was a combination of things.
"We looked at things like anticipated staff costs and the use of consultants for certain projects. But everyone was asked to go away and find savings, go through everything one by one," Mr Saunders said.
"There is an element of under-spends from this year which is a portion as well.
"In terms of down the line if that work is part of a continuous programme it will come back at some point."
Cr Kelliher asked if the council was not setting itself up for a shock for ratepayers. He said during Covid times the council said it would not pass on rate rises but then the following years there were hefty rate rises.
Mr Saunders said he was confident they were not setting the council up for that.
"But I put a caveat on that. The implementation for the new resource management system is a total unknown, in terms of the scale of resources required and the cost to the organisation for completing that function.
"We understand the expectation on the table from council and are very diligent of our financial planning. We are not going to come along and say we are starting at 15%. But we just don’t know the impact of the RMA implementation at the moment."
Council staff had come up with a proposal to look at options to spend $600,000 on air quality which had been sourced from rates, but that had been paused after a directive from government.
The options including spending the money on taking out old burners in certain towns and replacing them with more efficient burners or heat pumps.
That option did not find favour with some councillors. Cr Chanel Gardner said it seemed buying heating was a non-regulatory role which she did not favour. It was more suited to the long-term plan process.
Cr Robbie Byars said it was important to keep rates in check, which the council had done, and maybe it would be wiser to set aside the $600,000 as a hedge fund to subsidise some of the costs associated with the new resource management changes.
Cr Gretchen Robertson said the council had done plenty of air plans and monitoring. Action was needed and she would support to move to the next step.
It was decided after a narrow 6-5 vote, the $600,000 regional air plan surplus would be held in reserve pending a paper for consideration by the council. The paper would outline the options of a replacement burner scheme or increasing monitoring, education and a contestable community fund.
