A proposal to increase investment on flood protection in Southland has been questioned over its affordability, a local authority leader says.
Environment Southland will hold a public meeting on Monday at its council offices to discuss proposals in Environment Southland’s long term plan. The plan is open for submissions until May 6.
The meeting starts at 6pm.
Environment Southland chairman Nicol Horrell said there had been a lot of debate about the proposals at drop-in sessions around the region, at other events during the consultation period to date, and online.
"These are really significant proposals that will affect ratepayers across the region, and the public meeting is another opportunity for people to come along or join us online to hear what is being proposed."
The council’s key proposal is for ongoing and greater investment in flood protection for Southland to improve community resilience through an increase in operating expenditure of $2.3 million per annum to be funded by a new flood protection infrastructure rate.
The new rate would be based on capital value for all ratepayers and would replace 140 targeted rates to pay for improved flood mitigation.
"The council wants to position Southland as well as we can to weather, and recover quickly from, the inevitable floods that will come our way," Mr Horrell said.
There had been a wide range of feedback at consultation events and some strong themes were emerging.
"Affordability has been raised by many people, and as a council we are aware of the high cost of living and higher interest rates that are affecting everyone."
When significant changes were proposed people could feel uncertain.
The council wanted to reiterate that no decisions had been made and community feedback would be central to the long-term plan deliberations.
Balancing the need to invest in critical infrastructure to protect people and livelihoods against what was affordable required a significant amount of consideration, he said.
Councils around New Zealand were all facing challenges maintaining and enhancing critical infrastructure.
Environment Southland was part of continuing discussions with central government about how to fund critical improvements.
The organisation was proposing to use central government co-funding — not yet secured — and debt to pay for capital flood protection projects.
The projected borrowing is within the borrowing limits as per the financial strategy.
Environment Southland has included an indicative timeline of borrowing in its consultation document that is projected to rise to $73.2m in ten years’ time.
This would only happen if central government funding was secured for the majority of the capital project costs.
"Environment Southland will not be borrowing that money if central government infrastructure funding is not secured," Mr Horrell said.
A short presentation from the organisation will be followed by a Q&A session.
If people are not able to attend in person, they can watch the event from 6pm on Monday via the organisation’s website.
