infonews.co.nz
INDEX
FINANCE

Decisions recommended for rates and fees

Friday 26 October 2012, 3:12PM

By Queenstown Lakes District Council

201 views

QUEENSTOWN

A solution to make rates fairer will be considered next week by the Queenstown Lakes District Council, QLDC finance general manager Stewart Burns said.

Councillors will be asked to adopt a rates replacement proposal for the district at its full Council meeting on Tuesday (30 October).

In September the Council decided to go through a process to consult with the community to change the rates to be fairer.

“We discovered that the rating structure we moved to after the rates review was not delivering all of the results we had intended, it was not equitable to some ratepayers and we decided to fix it before instalment two,” Mr Burns said.

Council consulted widely with ratepayers and asked for submissions on the proposal.

“The response rate was low compared with the number of queries we have received, with 34 submissions, 9 in support and 25 opposing. Understandably the majority of those opposing were facing a rates increase,” Mr Burns said.

Having explored the options, the Council will be asked to adopt the proposal, which means the amount of rates the Council collects will not change but some cost will be reallocated amongst ratepayers.

“Given that ratepayers have now paid instalment one, if the recommendation is adopted, we will need to reconcile any changes to individual rates over the remaining three instalments,” Mr Burns said.

Meanwhile Council would be asked not to adopt a proposal to set guaranteed fees for resource management activities for Lakes Environmental.

“Based on concerns raised through the consultation process, the recommendation is to develop a new proposal that would take into account feedback received,” Mr Burns said.