Some ratepayers want the Waitaki District Council to prune even more the overall 6.4% rates rise proposed for the coming financial year.
Yesterday, they presented their views to the council as it heard more than 40 verbal submissions on its draft 2008-09 annual plan.
The council this year received 99 submissions on its annual plan.
Oamaru resident Ron Sim said the rates rises for his two properties averaged out at 11.4% and pointed out it was what the ratepayer paid, not the average increase, that mattered.
He was not happy with that increase at a time of declining incomes and he suspected other Oamaru ratepayers were facing a similar 11% rise.
The increase faced in the coming year was "rather like having gone through an earthquake with all of its aftershocks".
The aftershocks seemed set to continue unless some hard decisions were made by the council, Mr Sim said.
Gerry Angus, of Oamaru, urged the council to show more restraint.
The council was undertaking projects that were premature or not necessary and it should tighten administration costs.
Rates rises of 6% a year were "not maintainable", he said. Ken Mitchell of Oamaru said his family's total rates for a family of six over the next year would be $3912.24, an increase of 9%. It cost his family $75 a week to live in the district.
"Unfortunately, the services the council provides tend to be monopoly services and charges are therefore very difficult for ratepayers to reduce by taking action to reduce usage," he said.
He suggested costs should be more equitably spread across all users, not just property owners, and better reflected in actual use of services.
Waitaki's population was too small to sustain current levels of development and other funding methods were required, such as a visitors' tax and an input from new businesses.
Pauline Thwaites, of Oamaru, said ratepayers had had enough put on them with rates going up every year by more than $100.
Five years ago, her rates were $400 a year - now they were $400 a quarter.
Oamaru residents Dennis and Wendy Hunt said that while the council was proposing an overall rates rise of 6.4%, it was unjust that their Thames St household should be paying an additional $549 a year - a 15.2% increase.
They wanted the council to reduce their increase in line with inflation, not the "whopping $4144" for the coming year, they said.
Waitaki Ratepayers and Concerned Citizens Group secretary Peter Ellis pleaded with the council to listen to its ratepayers - "because they pay you and their purses have limits".
