At the extraordinary meeting on 28 June, Ōpōtiki District Council adopted its 2022/23 annual plan as well as the fees and charges schedule for the coming financial year.
A council’s annual plan sets out the budget for each financial year and outlines how the council will fund projects, activities and services. An annual plan must be developed each year, except for the year where council consults on and adopts a Long Term Plan.
Ōpōtiki Mayor, Lyn Riesterer, said that the projected rates rise in the document reflected a ‘bitter reality’ for councils around the country.
“Based on the work programmes planned for the year, an additional $800,000 in rates revenue is required to continue to do our core business. While our services and activities haven’t changed from last year’s LTP, what has changed is our operating environment – many crucial components to our work are much more expensive than they were even just a year ago. Things like insurance, cost of materials and people. Together, this means a rates increase of between 4% and 6% for each property.
“Some other factors out of our control have also impacted fees and charges such as the increased government levy for waste disposal,” Mayor Riesterer said.
However, it is not all bad news, as Chief Executive, Aileen Lawrie, pointed out in the meeting.
“For the first time, at least since I became CEO 12 years ago, we saw a significant increase in the number of rateable units in the district. Enough that it reduced the impact of the rates rise across the district by around 1%.
“I think of this as ‘growing the pie’. Council MUST provide certain services and council consults on other activities that the community WANTS council to provide. Together, the cost of providing all of that is the “pie” and that cost gets divided up between ratepayers. So the more ratepayers, the smaller each piece of the pie needs to be.
“New houses and properties in the district (subdivisions, new builds on sections and so on) have meant that the rates rise was shared across more people, lessening that cost just a little. I also believe it marks the start of the benefits being felt from a decade of work from council to grow and improve the district, making it an attractive place to move to or build a business in,” Ms Lawrie said.
The Annual Plan and our Fees and Charges schedule will be made available on the Ōpōtiki District Council website in the coming days and printed copies will also be available.
