The council approved its long-term plan consultation document this week and is now looking for public feedback.
The document is titled "These are challenging times, Southland Murihiku", a reflection of the difficult decisions the council is consulting on at a time when costs are rising steeply.
Southland Mayor Rob Scott said there was no hiding from the tough issues the council faced.
The district has the second-biggest roading network in the country — it has 5000km of roading — second behind Auckland City, which has 7000km of roads
But Auckland has about 500,000 ratepayers and Southland in comparison has 20,000.
"We have a big network to maintain in roads. And then you look at something like pipes. A pipe is a pipe. It doesn’t matter if it serves 50 people or 50,000, it is still the same pipe" he said.
Urban areas had the advantage of being able to connect networks easier, which led to cost savings. Spread-out districts such as Southland did not have that.
Increasing the population would bring advantages but also other issues.
"We do need more people down here and that would help us with these sort of things but that just brings a whole new lot of challenges around housing."
He said issues around Three Waters — wastewater, stormwater and drinking water — had been on the agenda for five years now and was not getting any easier.
Southland had 660 people per wastewater plant compared with Auckland, which had 92,000 per plant. There was the suggestion standards were too high and people could live with a poorer quality of water for less cost. Legislation did not allow councils to consider doing that.
He and council chief executive Cameron McIntosh had been to Wellington to speak about Three Waters with the government this week and it was listening, Mr Scott said.
But what level of assistance it would provide was not yet known.
He pointed to the fact that of the tax/rate take, central government took 92% of it and the council was left with the rest, which had to cover rising costs.
Inflation had been double digit at times but the inflation faced by councils was way more, Mr Scott said.
Inflation around bridges was at 38% and roading was at 27%. When council staff first started the long-term plan they were reluctant to tell him the rate rise figure such was its high level, he said.
It was above 30% so council staff had done well to get it down to 13.66%, which was below the national average of 15%. It had taken a lot of work to get to that point.
The council was looking to reduce levels of service on road maintenance while continuing to rebuild the 134 bridges that needed replacing before 2034.
Some roads would not be resurfaced, there would be some reduced speed limits and some low-use sealed roads would revert to gravel.
Resource consents for some wastewater plants may be extended in order to temporarily delay that work to reduce spending within the long-term plan period. This would help ease pressure on council’s borrowing limits, Mr Scott said.
He was hoping for constructive submissions on the long-term plan. Submissions open next Wednesday for a month.
