And next year, less of the budget debate will be in public, with the usual three-day hearings cut to one day and secret "workshops" held instead. With local-body elections scheduled for next year, councillors are sensitive about publicly exposing their free-spending ways.
A team of senior Council staff has been looking at ways of trimming costs, but their efforts seem to have resulted in only minor savings. No fat has been trimmed from the bloated bureaucracy, but turkeys are never going to vote for an early Christmas.
It was claimed that councillors also needed to be aware of ratepayers on fixed incomes:
There is some concern about their ability to pay. The council is mindful of that.It has hard to see any concern for ratepayers ability to pay in the Council's past or planned rates increases.
Council chief executive, Jim Harland, said that "The council isn't broke". Standard & Poor's has recently confirmed the council's AA- rating, saying that the Council
benefited from minimum legal limitations in regard to increasing its property taxes
i.e. the Council can raise rates any time it pleases, which is exactly what it is doing!
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Al, would it be possible for you to note down what the last two years rate rises were so we can calculate what the expected cumulative rates increase over this 5 year period is? And then compare to inflation?
ReplyDeleteAlso I see in the NZ Herald that ChCh has just opened a refurbished AMI stadium ready for the World Cup. Imagine a city 3x the size of Dunedin with far more economic activity, spending a mere $60M on their RWC venue.
Thanks for the question, Tat Loo. I'm away for the weekend but I will try to find out next week.
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