Mr Geddes wants to address debt of up to $413 million for the Queenstown Lakes District Council by 2019.
New Zealand's Office of the Auditor-general has labelled future spending of $180 million earmarked for nine projects in the district council's 10-year community plan as "not financially prudent".
The council has decided to defer the nine projects, which include drinking-water upgrades for Queenstown, new wastewater schemes for Kingston, Glenorchy and Cardrona, and new roads for Wanaka and Queenstown.
A $21.5 million indoor sports facility and aquatic centre for Wanaka has also been put on the backburner.
Mr Geddes met the mayors of Tauranga, Hamilton and the Western Bay of Plenty in Tauranga this week to discuss a joint bid by the four to address debt levels providing for growth-related services.
"We all share the common problem of how do we fund our capacity in the future to provide for growth, without putting at risk the community of today," Mr Geddes said of the bid.
The four councils are experiencing possible soaring debt levels to service future projects and have been put on notice by the auditor-general.
The meeting of the four mayors - Mr Geddes, Tauranga's Stuart Crosby, Hamilton's Bob Simcock and the Western Bay of Plenty's Ross Paterson - was about addressing affordability issues and how the group might engage with the central government.
It was not about the QLDC finding partners to approach the Government to ask for a bail-out from unaffordable debt, Mr Geddes said.
"The [QLDC projects] are not unaffordable. We could afford all of our community-plan projects, but it is about how people are prepared to pay."
The council did not want to inflict unreasonable or unfair rate increases on ratepayers to service requirements projected for the future, Mr Geddes said.
The four councils could "collectively" learn from each other, he said.
"We're not going to ask for money. But we want to make sure central government know the extent of ways they can help," he said.
This included possible legislative and regulatory changes, which could ease the respective councils projected debt burdens.
A saving of $21 million could be made to the Queenstown council's community plan if the Government relaxed regulatory changes which were recently made to national drinking-water standards, he said.
Trying to assess projected costs and contingencies for big-ticket council items "10 years into the future" was complicated.
The population of the Queenstown Lakes has climbed 30% in the past five years.
It is expected to peak in 2029 at a daily residential average of 68,305.
Peak visitor numbers - primarily expected during the Christmas holiday period - would push the population to 137,404, Mr Geddes said.
The four mayors hoped to sit down for briefing talks with Local Government Minister Rodney Hide and officials within the next three months.
