Hardly a surprise since: a) council budgets never shrink, and b) Cyclone Gabrielle brought a flood of relief and recovery costs … money that most in Hawke’s Bay won’t quarrel must be spent.
Napier City Council avoids an ‘official’ rates increase by treating its cyclone-induced extra spending as a ‘Disaster Recovery Rate’ of 2%. Hence, with the 9.7% increase previously planned an overall increase of 11.7%.
However, other changes are also being made to move costs to future years – the capital budget was ‘re-phased’ for 2023/24, shifting some $14.2 million to later years, and housing activity will be loan-funded instead of a planned 2% rates increase for that work.
Probably sound financial management. Certainly far superior to the scam run by old regimes in Napier that boasted ‘no borrowing at this council’ (as compared to amalgamation-championing Hastings). And left Napier residents with infrastructure that sucks.
More detail on NCC’s rates and budget decisions in this BayBuzz update from Bonnie Flaws.
Over in Hastings, the HDC has announced an 8.5% rates increase. That’s compared to the 5.7% approved in the Council’s current Long Term Plan. HDC attributed its increase to “inflationary pressures”.
CHB budgeting is still a work in progress. According to Mayor Alex Walker, CHBDC looks to be headed toward the same range as NCC – around a 9% rates increase for ‘normal’ operations and another 3-4% increase allocated specifically to cyclone recovery spending. Like the other councils, for CHBDC inflation and higher interest rates are driving up costs, plus – and critical for this district – uncertainty over potential government funding for extensive roading repairs.
With over a thousand kilometres of roads and parts of it already badly damaged by the storms of 2022, even before Cyclone Gabrielle CHBDC had estimated a roading repair bill of around $50 million. Post-cyclone, that has now tripled. Given the resources allocated to rural roading, the rates increase will weigh differentially on rural versus urban ratepayers.
Neither NCC nor HDC plans public consultation on its Annual Plan; CHBDC not yet certain. They say that re-prioritising post-cyclone is a big job that can’t be completed this fiscal year (closes 30 June), and will better addressed as new Long Term Plans are considered, a process that will begin later this year and will definitely include full public consultation. HDC put it this way: “Given the impacts of the cyclone the 2023/24 work programme is still in a state of significant uncertainty and therefore any conversation around alternative budget considerations with the community would be adding little value.”
Seems a fair call under the circumstances.
Moreover, each council is in the thick of preparing its ‘Locality Plan’ for the HB Recovery Agency (work that occupies the same planning and budget staff and execs). Those plans are councils’ ‘wish lists’ for government recovery assistance. Until those are processed, amended, prioritised by the Recovery Agency, then passed along to central government, and then Beehive’s funding decisions made, local councils are flying blind as to what external financial support they can expect.
A heap of calculators are overheating about now.
Meantime, when Wairoa District and HB Regional Council chime in, we’ll report accordingly.
Yes it’s been tough and very rough on some people and business.
BUT. Where do the supernatants find the extra money for such large rate increases.
How much it has it cost ratepayers to clean up/pickup/dispose of items and waste that are actually the responsibility of insurance company’s to dispose of?
Items that under a normal insurance claim such as fridge/freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, carpets, Tv’s etc from a property that the insurance company would have responsibility for disposing of as part of the insurance claim that are instead being collected by Council contractors and disposed of in Council landfill at Council (ratepayer) cost.
It seems that insurance companies are still happy to send vehicles to Turners/Manhiem Auction houses and recover money from the sale of flood damaged vehicles, (with some selling in the mid teens of $1000s as a Range Rover recently fetched) and keeping those funds yet the ratepayer is covering the cost of collecting/disposing of all the other waste coming from the floods.
The costs to Councils and therefore ratepayers to dispose of what is essentially the Insurance companies property is massive and the question remains, are Councils being reimbursed for these costs and how is that all being recorded?
One can only wish that our HB Councils were more frugal with their spending and took greater measures to control the increases. These increases are really tough on home owners and renters alike.
Good on you James for saying how it should be! But with all due respect, as you full well know, in the end,
the ordinary people land up paying for ALL of it. Just saying……