Reality hits billion-dollar 10-year city master plan

A billion-dollar master plan for Tauranga for the next decade may have to be trimmed by a quarter so ratepayers can afford it.
Three years and thousands of hours of preparation have gone into Tauranga City Council's 10-year community plan which received its first brush with economic reality today _ accompanied by a warning that it might have to cut back by $250 million.
Nearly 1100 projects, worth $1 billion in total, are listed in the master plan.
The projects were unveiled at a special session of the Tauranga City Council today _ the first in a series of pre-Christmas workshops to help decide what will be cut.
Projects big and small hang in the balance.
A final draft will be ready for public consultation on March 20 next year.
The plan covers expensive capital projects such as the $21m waterfront museum, minor projects such as buying $8000 worth of new lane ropes for Otumoetai pool, or just improving city levels of service _ such as whether street reseals should all be in super-smooth hot mix.
Politicians will juggle what they would like to happen against the council's bottom-line financial policies which limit the organisation's exposure to risk in order to preserve its A+ international credit rating.
Councillors were last week given a lesson in the economic realities when they were taken through strategies underpinning the organisation's economic viability by finance manager Malcolm Gibb.
Opting for a fiscally safe approach meant the council could afford to spend up to $750m in capital works over the next 10 years _ $250m less than the wish list.
Council ambitions for its 10-year plan took a huge hit in May's disastrous floods.
Mayor Stuart Crosby said the council had committed to about 800 of the 1100 projects, although these could still be revisited. They were mainly in the core service areas of water supply, sewerage treatment and disposal, roading and parks and leisure.
The 1100 projects are divided into the eight objectives listed in the council's planning document Tauranga Tomorrow which strives to "create the best possible city".
Objectives such as `a city that is easy to get around', will have cut-offs below which projects were deemed unaffordable. Debate will centre on what is above and below cut-off lines, and timing.
Hugely important to affordability is the development of funding sources outside of rates _ led by development contributions and the city investment programme.
Rates were also declining as the funder of council day-to-day operating costs. Fees and charges had risen from funding 38 per cent of operating costs in 2002 to nearly 50 per cent last year.
Mr Crosby said there was not a lot of spare financial capacity in the system and the council would have to be innovative.
He wanted to make sure that funding allowed every sector to grow with the community.
What were luxuries to some people were essentials to others; and arts and leisure had often been seen as being easy pickings when it came to cutting budgets.