Council adopts Long Term Plan to benefit more ratepayers

Taupō District Council adopted its Long Term Plan 2012-22 (LTP) that goes to Audit New Zealand for final review. Councillors voted 6 to 3 to go ahead with the plan and are resolute on reducing the projected debt, managing the rates increases over each of the next three years while still investing in economic development to get the District back on track.

The LTP includes a change to a capital value (CV) rating system for the general rates. Under CV, more residents will have smaller increases. Taking into consideration all ratepayers in the District, CV compared to land value rating (LV) shows that 53.3% of residential ratepayers will pay less rates under CV than under the old LV system.

• New CV – 8142 (48%) of residential ratepayers will have a rate increase of less than 10%

• With LV – 3692 (22%) of residential ratepayers will have a rate increase of less than 10%

 

Land value is an assessed value of the bare land, while capital value is the value of the land plus the improvements to it, such as structures and buildings. Using CV means rates costs tend to be more evenly spread across all ratable properties, a move made by more than 60 per cent of New Zealand Councils including a few more recently.

Deputy Mayor, Mike Downard says that the process has been demanding and the decisions have been tough. “This decision affects our community and in the end I felt strongly that I had to do what was best for the entire community.”

He says: “We recognise that the degree of change from the land value system to the capital value system was too much for some ratepayers. This revised version of CV will benefit more ratepayers. This version manages the degree of change to the most affected ratepayers so they would not get a great increase all at once.”

“We also responded to the community’s concerns about the industrial and commercial sector and added a differential of 1.8 for the commercial, industrial and accommodation sectors to address that concern. We also added a transition plan to phase in the change over three years.”

In addition, Council have cut what it costs to run the District by $60 million to reduce the projected debt over the next ten years and have made fundamental changes to the business which is reflected in the LTP.

The cost cutting allows for: only the basic repair to the AC Baths, delayed expenditure for limited upgrades to water supplies to meet drinking water standards (while ensuring that all schemes have security of supply), reduced expenditure on transportation projects that would not attract NZTA subsidy (though investment in the rural seal extension programme would continue) and $11m removed from the asset renewal budget.

In March, the Council put forward the draft plan to the community for input, consulted with the community and held hearings for those who wanted to publicly voice their feedback. The LTP is the 10-year plan that sets the direction for Taupō District. It is the strategic planning document for the services, activities and priority projects to be delivered by Council from 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2022. The final plan is to be adopted on 26 June 2012 after a review from Audit New Zealand.

For all enquiries about the consultation documents and the submission process, please call Taupō District Council’s freephone 0800 ASK TDC or read the documents online at www.taupo.govt.nz