Residential Ratepayers Will Continue to Bear Burden of Roading Costs

Residential ratepayers will continue to subsidise the cost of repairing roads damaged by logging trucks and dairy tankers, Far North Mayor Wayne Brown says.

Mr Brown was overseas when councillors adopted the council’s Long Term Plan 2012-2022 last week after earlier deciding to defer ‘fairer’ rating proposals for 12 months.

He says councillors’ decision to not introduce a targeted differential road rate in 2012-13 means residential ratepayers will continue to pay an unfair share of road costs.

These costs are expected to be about $50 million this year, more than half the Council's budgeted expenditure of $95 million.

“I want to make it completely clear that other than myself and the Deputy Mayor, the rest of the councillors chose not to offer residential ratepayers savings.”

The proposed road rate would have removed road funding from the general rate and allowed the Council to charge land use sectors according to how much they exacerbated road costs.

Research has shown that logging trucks cause $2.2 million of damage to roads in the district each year.

Yet, the forestry sector will only be required to meet 1.7 % of road maintenance costs in 2012-2013.

By contrast, the residential sector will be liable for 33.2% of these costs, despite vehicles associated with land uses in this sector causing minimal damage to roads.

The dairy farming sector will be liable for 4.8% of costs.

A differential structure proposed in the Draft Long Term Plan would have made the forestry, residential and dairy sectors liable for 14.8%, 28% and 7.5% of costs respectively.

Councillors - with the exception of Deputy Mayor Ann Court - chose to defer the introduction of the targeted road rate for 12 months.

They also decided to reduce the road funding requirement from the general rate by introducing a uniform annual charge of $100 per separately used part of a property.

“Their decision means that every one of you residential ratepayers is going to pay more than you need to,” Mr Brown says.

Councillors’ decision to not introduce a targeted road rate this year showed a lack of political will, not a shortage of information, he says.

“This was thoroughly researched, widely consulted on and it received 60% of support from those who made submissions.”

Councillors had missed a long-awaited opportunity to fix rating system anomalies that were unfair and unsustainable.

“We’re not anti-forestry or anti-farming. They’re just not paying their way.”