Bernie Jennings decries the Waitaki District Council’s rates-setting process. In a recent Waitaki District Council meeting (14.4.26), a councillor advised colleagues a 9% rates increase option should not be presented to the public alongside the 19% option.
The reason, recorded in unconfirmed minutes, was ‘‘the 9% increase might be more popular with the community but would leave less financial flexibility’’.
That sentence does not improve with re-reading.
A council makes decisions on behalf of the people who pay for it. When it consults those people, the purpose is to understand what they think, so the decision can reflect their views.
That is what the Local Government Act 2002 requires. It is also what most ratepayers would assume consultation means.
The Waitaki minutes say the opposite: the cheaper option must not be put to the public because the public might choose it. Consultation is being used not to test public preference but to direct it.
The 9% option is not a hypothetical. The April 28 Annual Plan Engagement Plan recorded that when staff started preparing the 2026-27 budget the figure was around 9%.
That was the working position. It aligned with the 7% increase forecast in the Long-Term Plan for 2026-27, plus a 2% departmental cost adjustment.
It would continue the previous council’s deliberately budgeted operating loss for the year, the same approach council has run for six of the last seven years.
In other words, 9% is not adventurous. It is what staff produced before councillors added 10%.
What ratepayers see in the consultation document is a choice between 19% (council’s ‘‘preferred option’’), 27%, and 45%.
The 45% option was included after some councillors argued at the same meeting that it should be presented to ‘‘properly inform the public’’.
The same meeting then excluded the 9% option for the opposite reason. It would inform the public too well.
A staff slide pack prepared for the April 14 meeting lists, under reasons to support higher rates now: ‘‘Rates capping to come from FY29 — if we reset rates now, it will be more achievable in later years.’’
The government has announced that local councils will face a cap on rate increases of 2% to 4% per year, transitioning from 2027, fully in force from July 1, 2029.
The cap is intended as cost-of-living relief for ratepayers. Once it is in place, percentage increases will be applied to whatever base rate exists at the time.
A higher base before the cap arrives means more dollars per year for the council, permanently, regardless of what central government later decides.
Resetting rates now makes future increases easier to obtain under the cap.
The April 14 minutes record councillors discussing ‘‘upcoming debt caps’’ as part of the rationale for the 19% figure. The consultation document mentions none of this.
Ratepayers reading it are told only about cost pressures and water infrastructure. They are not told part of the reason for paying more in 2026-27 is to lock in a higher base before the cap arrives.
Councillors might be right that pre-loading is good fiscal strategy.
But the point is that ratepayers are entitled to know it is part of the reasoning, so they can form their own view about whether their council should be doing it. Concealing the rationale is not a small omission.
The 45% option in the consultation document fully funds depreciation on Waitaki’s water assets to the tune of $9 million. Those assets, and any depreciation reserve built up alongside them, will transfer to Southern Waters on July 1, 2027.
The transfer is mandatory under the government’s water reform programme. After transfer, Southern Waters will charge ratepayers for water through its own water bills.
If the 45% option were adopted, ratepayers would pay $9m extra in their 2026-27 rates to build a depreciation reserve, which would transfer to Southern Waters along with the assets 12 months later.
Southern Waters could then charge ratepayers again through water bills as it draws on those reserves to maintain assets. The same money is collected from ratepayers twice.
Council’s staff briefing lists this as a reason against fully funding depreciation. Council’s existing policy says depreciation should remain unfunded until the new entity decides its own approach after transfer. Council resolved the same thing in 2025.
The 45% option asks ratepayers to overturn an existing policy in the final 12 months of WDC running its own water services.
The April 28 council agenda describes the 45% option as something council would adopt ‘‘in an ideal world’’.
So council is presenting to the public, as Option 3, an option council itself does not actually advocate.
A councillor at the meeting moved an amendment to reframe the consultation around ‘‘options required’’ rather than ‘‘financial outlook’’. The amendment lapsed without a seconder.
Another councillor, Dan Lewis, has stated on social media that ‘‘we did not vote on the level of rates rise’’, only on whether to consult. Four out of 10 councillors voted against 19% as the basis for consultation. The vote was six to four.
The ‘‘council’s preferred option’’ labelling on the consultation document does not disclose this either.
Ratepayers in the Waitaki district have until May 13 to make submissions on the 2026-27 Annual Plan. The consultation document tells them the choice is 19%, 27%, or 45%.
Council’s own minutes and staff papers tell a different story. Ratepayers are entitled to know about both.
• Bernie Jennings is a submitter on the Waitaki District Council 2026-27 Annual Plan and has friends and family who are ratepayers. Sources for all figures and quotations in this piece are the council’s own meeting agendas, minutes, staff briefings, and supporting documents, available on the council’s website.
