Calls to curb price rises for burial and cremation fees
Funeral directors are calling on councils to curb price rises for burial and cremation fees, ahead of this year's local body elections. Funeral Directors Association chief executive Gillian Boyes spoke to Charlotte Cook.
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RNZ News
4 hours ago
- RNZ News
New Plymouth residents say proposed water charge changes will be unfair
One resident says every dwelling should have its own meter just as they did for electricity and for gas. Photo: LDR / Emily Ireland New Plymouth councillors have been told proposed changes to how water is charged for will be unfair to people living in apartments or on cross-lease sections with multiple dwellings. Currently ratepayers are charged a flat $547 for water, but from 2027 they will be billed at least in part according to volume of water used. Council is considering three options for how those charges would be levied. Fixed charge plus a volumetric charge or a fixed charge plus a volumetric charge with a daily allocation of water (100 litres) or fully volumetric charging. Council received more than 1000 written submissions on the proposals and heard oral presentations at a hearing on Monday. Elaine Gill spoke on behalf of the residents of the Liardet Apartments in the inner-city. She said the 25 apartments - a mix of one to three bedroom apartments, nine of which were rentals, one an AirBnB and 15 owner-occupied - would have just one water meter installed for the whole building. "We want individual council-supplied water meters for each apartment... and there is space where our water is supplied for a meter to be installed." If that wasn't possible the block's residents wanted a fixed charge - based on average residential use in New Plymouth - with volumetric charging. Gill worried about how water use would be calculated . "It's totally unfair. There is a need to recognise that each apartment is different, each has a different number of people living there. "We have one apartment with three bedrooms and one person living in there and one apartment with two bedrooms that has five people living there, and obviously their water usage is going to be very different." Councillor Sam Bennett asked Gill if the apartment owners would be willing to pay to install individual meters. Gill didn't think that was a fair solution either. "If we are talking about equity, if we had 25 individual dwellings in Westown they would all have their own water meter [installed by council]. "Why is it that because we are all packed up one on top of the other that we can't have the same consideration." John Staddon owned rental properties on a cross-leased section and had received a letter from council saying only one meter would be installed and water costs shared between the dwellings. "My concern is that the definition of shared needs some further clarification. For example, where there are two properties on a cross-lease section would sharing be on a 50-50 basis? "If so, what consideration would be made should one of the properties have a family of four, both parents working, two cars, maybe a spa pool, and the other occupant a widow on superanuation? "The use of water by the family would be far higher than the other occupant. A 50-50 share in this scenario is not equitable. Unless there is a formula that recognises the size of the dwelling and number occupants 50-50 sharing is wrong." Staddon said every dwelling should have its own meter just as they did for electricity and for gas. "Payment for electricity or gas is not shared and neither is phone or internet connection, so why then should water charges be." Staddon said as a landlord he would be willing to drop rents if part of the water charge was removed from his rates bill, but he was not willing to pay for the installation of additional meters. Veronica Edwards also owned a cross-lease section with two independent households on it. "Under the current plan we're stuck with one meter. I believe this approach is neither fair or just for people living in multiple dwellings." Mayor Neil Holdom said that for every dollar invested in meters, council expected to make savings of between $4 and $5 over the life of the meter "but in some cases to install meters in every property it may cost us $4000 to $5000 in plumbing, maybe more". Submitter Hannah-Miriam Knuckey said if council insisted that additional meters be paid for by property owners it should pay the upfront costs and allow people to pay the meter off via their rates - interest free - over five to 10 years. Council had so far installed more than 23,000 roadside water meters at a cost of $24 million. It was envisaged they would eventually save council $40 million in capital expenditure by encouraging efficient water use and identifying leaks. The meters had already been credited with identifying 180 leaks, saving 1.75 million litres of water daily in New Plymouth, where water usage was up to two times that of other similar-sized communities. Council would decide on a charging system in August. A year-long "mock billing" trial would start in July next year to allow households to monitor water use, fix leaks and prepare for volumetric charging in beginning July 2027. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
4 hours ago
- RNZ News
Auckland hospice thirds number of patients due to funding shortfalls
An Auckland hospice is having to cut the number of people it cares for by almost a third because it's short of funding. Totara Hospice gets $8.8 million from the Government, but that doesn't even cover the wage bill, so it fundraises on top of that. Faced with a shortfall of $3.6 million, Chief Executive Tina McCafferty sounded the alarm bell to try and ward off cuts. But with no solution a month later, the South Auckland community the hospice serves is going to start feeling the impacts. Totara Hospice chief executive Tina McCafferty spoke to Melissa Chan-Green. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Scoop
5 hours ago
- Scoop
Hutt City Council Chief Executive Releases Pre-Election Report
Hutt City Council has published its 2025 Pre-Election Report ahead of the local elections in October. Chief Executive Jo Miller said that while the report is a statutory requirement, it also serves as an opportunity to widely share the challenges and opportunities facing the Lower Hutt. Hutt City Council's pre-election report makes it clear there are a number of challenges and significant work ahead. The Long Term Plan includes a $2.8 billion investment for infrastructure through to 2034 - most of which is going directly into water and transport. "We are starting work on Te Wai Takamori o Te Awa Kairangi (RiverLink) - a combined $1.5 billion investment in partnership with the Government and Greater Wellington Regional Council. This is the largest project ever delivered in the city's history," says Jo Miller. "At the same time, we are working to set up a new regional water entity from 1 July 2026." Miller says there are exciting projects ahead but also real pressures. "The incoming Council will need to make some hard calls. Our costs are rising and there is a need to look carefully at what is being spent and why - and how we can improve our performance in a way that doesn't add significant costs to ratepayers. "The current form of local government is not sustainable beyond the medium term given the scale of the financial challenges councils across the country are facing. As water reform and changes to the planning system via the Resource Management Act arrive, important discussions are starting to occur on amalgamation options for councils in the Wellington region." In response to some of the challenges facing local government, Hutt City Council is already using innovation to boost performance and find efficiencies with the use of technology, particularly Generative AI. Use of AI tools has saved tens of thousands of hours of staff time. Work is now ongoing to build on these improvements and leverage recent investment in modern digital tools. As part of our wider work exploring how AI can help us connect more effectively with our community, Hutt City Council has created a new podcast series unpacking the Pre-Election Report. Narrated by an AI version of Chief Executive Jo Miller's voice, the short episodes aim to make the report's insights more accessible and easier to engage with. "Within our increasing use of AI, I suggested that we do something innovative and deliver New Zealand's first AI podcast highlighting the pre-election report. It's not only a way to showcase AI use, it actually makes the content more accessible to more of our community - like the visually impaired." People interested in standing for Council or just keen to learn more about how the city is run, are encouraged to read the Pre-Election Report. It includes lots of useful information, graphs and data. It also lists other documents you can read if you want more detail. Key election dates: 4 July: Candidate nominations opened. By 19 October: Declaration of final election results.
