Playing percentages on Waitaki rates bill
Waitaki Mayor Tavendale says a 7% rates rise is not, in her words, "viable or fiscally responsible", warning it risks ministerial intervention.
Council records say otherwise. Seven percent was in the long-term plan the auditor-general signed off, so it cannot be called unviable or irresponsible. It carries the previously budgeted operating deficit.
The council’s May 26 report calls this year’s rise "largely to reduce the deficit, not to fund increased expenditure", and says the operating budget will be "similar to" the last two years. That’s not a crisis.
On the threat of ministerial intervention: the minister has no power to approve or reject a council’s rates or annual plan. Intervention is a last resort for serious failure in a council’s management or financial position.
A council adopting the very figure in its audited plan is not a failure. More irregular is the council departing from that audited plan with a 22% that was never consulted on.
The mayor’s argument against 7% also misses its target. The figure proposed is 9%, the plan’s 7% plus the 2% inflation the mayor says has "already been felt".
The 9% absorbs the very costs she cites. It was the council’s own Option 1 in April, the lowest of the options its officers costed. At face value, her point argues for 9%, not 22%.
The council consulted on 19%, 27% and 45%, costed 19% and 27% but never 22%, and settled on it only after the meeting adjourned and reconvened.
Councillors can still vote for 9%. The deficit, and the rest, can wait for next year’s long-term plan, when the effect of water leaving the WDC is known.
Targeting the vulnerable
When I look at the amount of money that is available for roading upgrades and the millions being proposed for aged care, I am appalled that the most vulnerable disabled members of our community will be paying more to use their Total Mobility cards.
Most only use them to get to appointments for medical treatment. The amount of money that this planned increase will bring would only be a minuscule amount to the government funds. Pensioners struggle financially to cover costs: I doubt there will be an increase to their benefits.
What is the rationale behind this?
Quality of life
Phil Murray of the Central Otago Environmental Society is right to protest the proposal to strangle the Manuherikia River with reduced minimum flows (Opinion ODT 17.6.26). That project looks like a subsidy for intensive dairy farming, bringing with it the massive pollution already fouling water supplies in Canterbury and Southland.
Otago Regional Council seems happy to sacrifice its ratepayers’ quality of life so that a rural minority can make a profit in the short term. In the long run, everyone will lose.
All losers
Queenstown has gone. So has Wānaka, Cromwell, Hāwea.
Developers see potential and gradually wrap a natural wonder in rooftops, streets. Then they see some more. More land. Name it and claim it and build it. Lifestyle? Massive mortgages, a lot of worry and relentless work to reduce those relentless burdens,
Big wealth surpasses all that. You can have what you want. Be exclusive. Private and very secure, with a view. Create an Adventure Capital. Great stuff, soaring tourism, prosperity.
But the pop-up suburbs exhaust everyone, the very core of a special place starts to wither. It’s no longer special. It has gone. No winners here.
But wait, there’s more in the trillionaire stakes
In reference to various stories and letters to the editor, I must point out that Elon Musk is not, and never has been, the "first trillionaire in history".
If the American news media did a bit of thinking and research, it would have realised there have been others.
The Medici banking family, for instance, had an estimated wealth of hundreds of billions to trillions in today’s money.
They were wealthier than any individual to this day, holding sovereign level wealth. They ruled Florence and surrounding areas for 300 years.
There have been trillionaires, billionaires and millionaires throughout history. The Templars, the first multinational bankers, had huge wealth and were richer than any monarch of their time. They were exempt from taxes and answered only to the Pope.
American John D. Rockefeller had an estimated wealth of up to $400 billion in today’s money.
So, Elon Musk is not unique in any way.
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