For those who didn’t watch it, the most enlightening ‘official’ comment was this:
..in the past 51% of our rates was levied by way of fixed charges. That was fundamentally unfair, too many, what Councillors have done, is try to make the system a little fairer and more transparent. It’s also designed to try and take the better than 80% funding pressure off the domestic ratepayer. What we’ve done is take the first of what may be a number of fixed charges that were levied, irrespective of use and link them to capital value.
We have also moved some rating units which were previously on the domestic ratepayer onto the commercial sector. These are first steps on a process to balance our rates to make them approximately 33% fixed charges, 33% capital value and 33% land value. It is going to take some time before people can see the full impact of these changes as Councillors want to work with steadily rather than suddenly on these changes. Cr M Scott
We think this means that fixed charges, which have been 51% of the total, are being reduced this 33%, while charges based on the capital value of ‘rating units’ are being increased from 6% to 33% of the total.
More info is needed, which we will endeavour to find out.
It is only fundamentally unfair if you accept that council should be in the wealth distribution business.
They claim user pays is their guiding light for many other fees and charges but not rates. Water is user pays, rubbish is user pays. Both are core council functions in my view. Why are roads, stormwater, sewerage any different?
Infrastructure is a different matter but again should be levied across the entire community on a roughly equal basis.
What runs on the board do we have from council spending $2.7M of our money on economic development? Where does it go, what are the measurable objectives and how are they doing against those?
I agree with Margaret. What is the ROI for Council spending $2.7 million on economic development? The money needs to go back into community needs in Otaki, Waikanae, Paraparaumu and Paekakariki.