Tuesday, 15 April 2008
THE debate over Whakatane’s proposed 9.6 per cent rates rise came to a head at a public meeting on Friday.
The meeting – organised by Whakatane Grey Power – drew about 200 people, many of whom had concerns about how they would be able to manage their budgets in the face of such a rise.
Guest speaker David Ogden, mayor of Hutt City where this year’s rates hike is just 2.2 per cent, outlined his council’s philosophy for keeping rates low.
And Whakatane mayor Colin Holmes, who has faced criticised over the town’s rates, strongly defended the increase and outlined the reasons for it.
Among various issues raised by the audience at the War Memorial Centre’s Little Theatre was the council’s planned crematorium.
Meeting organiser Sandy Milne said after the meeting that Mr Holmes had ignored people’s comments that a chapel was not required to be built as part of the crematorium.
“Here we had the 200 clients next to be cremated saying they did not need a chapel – but they were ignored,” Mr Milne said.
One man said he was very concerned about effect of rates increases on the people living in Waiaraka, many of whom had been there for a long time and were living on fixed, low incomes.
Another man criticising the council was 86-year-old Mick Diederen.
“I have been in Beach Street since 1952 and the rates keep going up but it’s difficult to get anything done,” he said.
Complaints Mr Diederen had written to the council about included broken footpaths, bad kerbing, trees in need of trimming, and the poor water quality.
“The previous mayor was better – he listened to the ratepayers and replied to my letters,” he said.
One man said he was paying about $4000 in the rates for his Whakatane property, compared to $1400 for a similar property in Tauranga.
During his talk, Mr Odgen said Hutt City had decided to “swim against the tide” and set low rates increases as an absolute priority.
“During recent years, rates have skyrocketed in New Zealand,” he said.
A rates inquiry conducted recently in New Zealand had revealed “bad planning” was a contributor to high rates, Mr Ogden said.
“We set a financial strategy to attack rates and debt, bringing both down, after the previous council had lost their way financially due to ego-swelled projects.”
Getting rid of debt and not being tempted to do needless projects was important to keeping rates down, Mr Odgen said.
However, Mr Holmes strongly defended the rate rises in Whakatane.
He explained that rates were often cyclical due to the need to replace infrastructure on certain years when many requirements might surface at the same time.
“We have the best rating policy in New Zealand, with a high degree of user pays, and we run a pretty tight ship,” he said.
The failure to have functional systems at the council during previous years had contributed to the rate increases.
“We had to rebuild the information technology systems, create asset management plans, and there was also a lot of policy work to catch up on.”
Mr Holmes admitted there had been some initial failures in managing works contracted out by the council, but said the council had quickly corrected that.
Disaster mitigation and much-needed infrastructure work also had to be done at a time when the cost of construction material had risen dramatically.
Mr Holmes provided figures from a comparison between the situation in Hutt City and that in Whakatane which showed Eastern Bay residents had more resources per capita. In Whakatane, the public equity per resident was $19,000 and in Hutt City it was $7000 per resident.