Council Adopts Annual Plan Budget

Scoop

11 hours ago

Marlborough District Councillors adopted the Council's annual plan budget for 2025/26 today, with an average rates increase of 8.61%.
Mayor Nadine Taylor thanked Council staff for their work to bring rates down from the Long Term Plan forecast of 10.62%.
'Council's core spending remains strongly focussed on providing infrastructure, including roading, flood protection, waste management, water supply and community facilities.
'The increase is made up of a number of elements outside Council's control - depreciation at 3.23% and local government inflationary adjustments at 3.3%*, which add up to 6.53%. We are also still paying for the Covid Rates Relief fund applied during the pandemic to help ratepayers, the cost of which is spread over three years, with an impact of 1.5% per year.'
'Roading and footpaths are the biggest item of Council capital expenditure with $64M allocated this year for improvements and renewals. Included in this figure is $29M to repair and rebuild the storm damaged Sounds roading network, on which work continues at pace. It's especially pleasing that the Sounds roading repairs are ahead of schedule and under budget.'
'Thirty one million dollars is allocated to three waters infrastructure, with $16M going towards flood protection and community facilites.'
She said the annual plan included $6.5M for building flood protection works in Spring Creek and at Conders Bend, Renwick, provided through the Government's Kānoa Regional Infrastructure Fund.
'As we experienced again in the past few days, our stop bank network is critical to the safety of the communities who live beside the Wairau River. I want to assure everyone that the budget is in place for the necessary stop bank rebuilds and repairs.'
'Council's capital expenditure budget for this year has increased to $119M, including the Sounds roads recovery. As a result, projected debt is $154M at the end of June 2026, as opposed to $190M forecast in Council's Long Term Plan (LTP) last year.'
'I'd like to thank the 89 people and organisations who made the effort to give us their feedback via the new streamlined engagement process. Your ideas covered many topics including community facilities, parks and open spaces, regional development, animal control and roads.'
'Councillors referred some ideas to the Long Term Plan Working Group for further consideration and confirmed a $40k annual museum operating grant to the Marlborough Historical Society.'
A record of the councillors' public feedback discussion can be found in the Economic, Finance and Community Committee minutes of 18 March 2025 on Council's website.
Public consultation also recently took place on charges for the Bluegums landfill and the consequential impact on charges at transfer stations. An average increase of 17.82% will be applied to fees at the Blenheim landfill and transfer station, meaning the average trailer load of waste will cost an extra $5.92 to dispose of.
Councillors received the draft annual plan budget at its 8 May 2025 meeting and supported three small levels of service requests for the 2025-26 financial year, including replacing the air conditioning system at the Marlborough Events Centre.
Councillors declined requests to fund a part time Welcoming Communities Coordinator role and a full time librarian position to cover the loss of 1.5 FTE fixed term positions. The Marlborough Library in Blenheim will therefore reduce its opening hours by five a week, closing at 5pm rather than 6pm on week days. Weekend opening hours will remain the same.
Note:
The BERL Local Government Cost Index (LGCI) is a measure of the change in costs for goods and services purchased by local government in New Zealand, similar to the Consumer Price Index. BERL (Business and Economic Research Limited) provides this index to councils, which is used to forecast price and cost movements, including for major expenditure items like bitumen and water pipes.