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Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has agreed to a partial sale of the council's airport shares, rather than selling the full $18 million in shares, and wants a higher rates increase to get his budget passed.
Brown is now proposing to sell just over 8 percent of Auckland Airport shares, rather than the council's entire 18 percent shareholding.
But he is calling for an average rates increase of 7.7 percent, up from 6.6 percent in his previous proposal.
"I have reflected by all the points raised by the counsellors," Brown said following several hours of discussion with councillors today.
Brown said he had "compromised on every lever" with his budget, and there would be a shortfall with the partial sale which required cuts elsewhere.
"I believe this proposal is the best balanced, achievable, prudent budget."
The council would consider his budget later today with a possible vote in the afternoon. However, some councillors said they would need more time to consider the changes.
Just three councillors spoke in support of the mayor's proposal to sell all of the council's airport shares.
In a preliminary discussion before a closed-door debate, the majority of councillors either opposed the sale or only supported a partial sale.
Andy Baker, Maurice Williamson and Desley Simpson told Brown they would support his proposal to sell the council's entire stake.
But Alf Filipaina, Sharon Stewart and Julie Fairey said they were still undecided.
"We still have to produce a balanced budget," Brown said. "We don't have the option of the Government of just printing more money, we have to have a balanced budget."
Maungakiekie-Tāmaki councillor Josephine Bartley told the meeting she could not imagine selling an asset that brought in money for the city.
Councillors give feedback
Earlier, councillors settled in for a long session that began at 10am as they debated the mayor's budget proposal to plug a $325 million deficit.
Three councillors who declared a stake in Auckland Airport would be able to vote in today's meeting.
Councillors gave their feedback on the budget in an open workshop.
Manurewa-Papakura councillor Angela Dalton said the council had a responsibility to listen to residents and the airport was showing its worth.
"This is not the time to sell the car to buy the petrol," she said, noting that council had faced harder budget calls during Covid-19.
"It's going to be another hard couple of years."
Manukau councillor Lotu Fuli believed the council should sell under-performing assets, but the council had not actually looked at all its assets, and the airport was a solid earner.
"I'm of the view that actually it's not an underperforming asset. I've seen the price of that asset continue to rise through this whole process. At the start of this process we were told nothing was off the table" but the focus had only been on the airport, he said.
North Shore Ward councillor Chris Darby said he was prepared to raise rates higher than the Brown's proposal. "I did put up a partial sell earlier on" on the airport assets, he said, and was prepared to consider a sell of $500 million.
"We do need to really take a really robust process to understand the strategic values and strategic output of the airport."
Maungakiekie-Tāmaki councillor Josephine Bartley said the focus needed to be on the community.
"I feel like your budget was looking at a philosophical standpoint of what the core services of a council should be," she told Brown. "I believe that the core services of a council should be what serves the well-being of the city."
She said she felt like those services were being "held to ransom" over the clash on selling the airport shares.
"I do have affection for the airport shares because that brings us in $40 million a year... I want us to look at the rest of the $70 billion assets that we have. I just cannot comprehend selling an asset that brings us in money."
Waitākere Ward councillor Shane Henderson said rates needed to be looked at. "I think we need to go higher on rates," he said, "Maybe 1 percent, maybe more."
"The initial proposal I called death by a thousand cuts," Henderson said of Brown's first budget proposal to sell all the airport shares. "Let's move on from a conversation about cutting ... Let's talk about the city that we actually want to live in."
Henderson said asset sales keep being put forward and constituent feedback to him said it was time to move beyond that tactic.
Rodney Ward councillor Greg Sayers said feedback from the public was the largest in the super city's history, and 53 percent of it supported full or partial sale of the airport shares.
"I am wholeheartedly in support of keeping the residential rate increase at the low rate of inflation. This is because Auckland is in a cost-of-living crisis."
Sayers said he also wanted to keep debt low and Brown was presenting a 'band-aid' budget to deal with the crisis.
"Auckland's still looking for the mayor to fix Auckland. Now is the time for bold and brave decisions" to get the council back to business, he said.
North Shore councillor Richard Hills spoke out about some of the decisions and his focus on reducing cuts to the community.
"I guess when I look at this budget, I don't like any of the levers. The cuts in the budget presented were rough. What the community told us, and I've never seen it happen before, 73 percent of those submitted told us they opposed some or all of the cuts."
Hills said the budget strife had been difficult. "I will admit this has been the hardest six months of my career. Even the cuts proposed still leave us with hundreds of jobs cut from this organisation."
A rise in rates would provide stability, he believed.
"We will break our staff and our city if we do this again next year."