Council adopts plan for next ten years
Ōpōtiki District Council has adopted the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan and a host of associated fees and charges, policies and documents to set the path forward for the coming ten years.
Opotiki Mayor, David Moore, thanked councillors and the many staff who worked hard to get the document across the line.
“We have quite a few multi-term councillors who have seen through several LTPs now. And I have also been speaking to others across the sector and almost everyone is agreed that this has been the most difficult and lengthy planning processes any of us have been through. It has been a significant challenge and I really appreciate the hard work of councillors who have worked through every line of this Plan, and staff who have been working non-stop on this, on top of their day jobs. It was great to get this adopted and across the line today,” Mayor Moore said.
Through the submission process, Council listened to the views of the community with many submitters highlighting the impact rates rises have on the community and the desire to reduce services to reduce that impact.
“I think we got that balance about right. The draft we took to our community stripped us back to essentials - deferring and delaying any costs possible like revaluations, depreciation and renewals. We reduced the impacts of the rates rises further with cuts to community services across engineering, parks and reserves, events, and regional development.
“Looking through the submissions, it’s pretty clear that the community supported these savings and that means we’ve kept this year’s rates rise to around 10% on average and the same for next year. Some of the larger jumps signalled in latter years will be reviewed through future Annual Plan processes and will be weighed up against affordability and the economic environment of the day,” Mayor Moore said.
The draft LTP also underwent rigorous audits overseen by Audit NZ and the Office of the Auditor General.
“There were a few issues to work through from the auditors’ reports, in particular, we have elected to have an ‘unbalanced budget’ for years 1-3 which means that our operating revenues won’t meet our operating expenses over that period. We simply do not think that our communities can afford to carry those costs at this time and so have elected to fund the balances from reserves. We also have a lot of infrastructure renewal that is needed in this LTP and this allows us time to change the way we fund this work so that it better stretches the costs of capital renewals over the life of those assets,” Mayor Moore said.
Alongside the LTP, Council adopted the Revenue and Financing Policy, Significance and Engagement Policy, Rates Remission and Postponement Policy and the setting of rates and penalties regime.
The first year of the Long Term Plan comes into effect as of 1 July 2024. Council received special dispensation for the late adoption along with a number of other Councils. Rate demands will be sent out in November and there will be just two invoices this year not four.
“We really do appreciate that the later invoice and the timing of just two invoices is not ideal and will be difficult to manage for some households. This is the result of the delayed LTP and all the changes we’ve had to make with three waters out and then in and so on. Councillors have committed to re-look at in the next annual plan,” Mayor Moore said.
The final LTP 2024-2034 will be made publicly available on Council’s website within the next few weeks.
