3 days ago
Marlborough Council Passes Reduced Rates Increase Of 8.61%
Marlborough District Council unanimously approved a rates increase of 8.61% along with its 2025/26 annual plan at today's [Monday] extraordinary council meeting.
The vote was delayed from last Thursday's scheduled council meeting due to last-minute savings discovered in the council's insurance premiums.
Chief financial officer Geoff Blake told council that after taking the weekend, council finalised a 0.76% reduction on Thursday's rates figure.
'We have received a significant reduction on last year's premium,' Blake said.
'[That] had the effect of reducing the rates increase by a further 0.76%...which is about $750,000 to $760,000.
'With that we've eliminated any cost of the influence of the insurance cost on our rates increase.'
Mayor Nadine Taylor welcomed this news, bringing the rates rise down 2.01% from the figure projected in the 2024 Long-Term Plan.
Taylor acknowledged that while the increase was higher than ratepayers would like, most of the costs were outside of council's control.
'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 adds 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 1.5% every year.'
The Sounds Roads recovery added another 0.23%, and additional government levies added 0.25%.
Taylor said that council's inflationary figures were different, and in this case higher, than that of consumers.
'It's different than the cost index that the residents face of eggs and bread and fuel.
'Ours is concrete and bitumen, it is pipes in the ground, and so those things have to be covered.'
Councillor Gerald Hope asked if the spending laid out in the annual plan got the greatest value for money for ratepayers, focusing on the must-haves rather than the nice-to-haves.
'This is one of the most important decisions we make each year,' Hope said.
'We are going to be challenged this year, as you always are in an election year, [about] frivolous spending [and] unnecessary expenditure.
'People look at us cynically and say you're spending your money in the wrong place.
'So I'm asking the obvious question on behalf of the public, are we spending money well strategically for the greater good of our community?'
Blake told Hope council staff had worked to ensure the annual plan and rates rise were restricted to fundamental services.
'There were three or four items where we had considered and deferred or cancelled expenditure,' Blake said.
'I believe... we have applied appropriate due diligence in order to minimise the cost and maximise the opportunity in getting value from it.'
Taylor said council had kept the pressure on staff to focus on core infrastructure.
'As a council we prioritise, and the province is seeing the benefit of that prioritisation. Because those services are being delivered and we're not chasing our tail as some other councils are.'
Council claimed that of the 8.61% rates increase, 0.58% was going towards service costs, such as replacing the air-conditioning system in the Marlborough Events centre.
Councillor Croad said that 'ugly hump' of rates rises might be over, but he thought council may need to have a public conversation about where more savings could be found.
'I want the public to know that we don't treat budgeting on an annual basis frivolously and lightly. We do not indulge in the nice-to-haves,' Croad said.
'We have a very, very small number that's supplied to those things, and those are things that our community have asked us for.
'We've proudly held the line wherever possible with those things, because they are of high value to the community.
'I think that moving forward... [while] we are struggling to get [rates] back down to a number that we're really happy with ... we will need to have a conversation with our community about what they're prepared to forego.'
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
