Last week saw our council’s deliberations of the Long-Term Plan taking into account the views of 500 submitters from community consultation.

Councillors intently considered these submissions and were swayed by many persuasive and articulate arguments that provided a balance of views.

For rates, the recommended and widely supported approach was to support their smoothing.

This is where council budgets are initially underfunded and then gradually recovered. However, discussions centred around the risk of this approach, with concerns that a six-year period was too lengthy. Given affordability challenges due to the cost-of-living crisis and interest rate, a compromise was reached:

Smoothing rates over three years with a “softening” of the 2024/25 rates requirement being recovered over the following two years.

A record number of submissions focused on the Pahiatua Pool. This was heavily debated with concerns around our debt, operational cost and broader rates affordability. It was in contrast with the need to replace the current Pahiatua pool and the effort and passion the community has put into developing a new plan for Pahiatua. The pool gained council support and will now be included in the Long-Term Plan for adoption in late July, with loan funding for the capital and necessary rate funding once it becomes operational.

During the planning process, considerations included the National Land Transport Plan. Reduced road funding is now being indicated by NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi. This reduction will impact on our roading network plans.

While disappointing, efforts to secure government recognition for roading investment continue. The effects of future storms, that are expected to become more severe on the roading network, may also have less funding made available. We need to come up with a better way as a country than to pile on more cost to ratepayers and then blame councils.

Addressing the strain caused by heavy trucks on roads, a differential rate was introduced to promote equity in roading charges. These trucks can place huge strain on roads resulting in massively more damage than cars to. Submitters supported this change. Whilst some felt it wasn't an ideal system, it was considered better than not trying to address the effect of trucks on roads.

Particularly, at a time when fuel related taxes are struggling to fund the national road network and rates (not users) are being seen to make up the difference.

Regarding farms, the original intent of our draft plan was to charge “non-contiguous” farms uniform rates for multiple physically separated pieces of land. However, submissions highlighted fairness in charging these properties only once, and how challenging administering the change might be. No change will be made to the current way we rate this.

Despite the confirmed changes by council, the chief executive was then instructed to find further savings. However, at this very late stage there are limited options without starting some of the planning process over again. Altering budgets this late is very difficult, and service levels cannot change without new consultation. However, budgets cannot practically change much, without further reducing services to our resident and ratepayers which requires consultation.

Delegating changes to the Long-Term Plan to the Chief Executive, staff will finalise rate requirements and financials, which is starting as you read this.