Over the years our ability to more accurately measure and monitor environmental trends has improved markedly. This helps to determine what assistance and programmes we advocate to speed up environmental improvements. The key input here though is time.
For example if you plant a tree today you don't know for at least 10 years if it is the right species and if it will have the desired effect. That's why all our programmes to focus on and help change freshwater issues and enhance natural environments are 40-plus years minimum.
With natural lag effects trending improvement may actually take much longer. Rome wasn't built in a day!
But rest assured we are making progress. We all agree we want better environmental outcomes and we want them now but even at a 19 per cent increase it's impossible to buy time.
Over the years the council has had its share of specific challenges and has adjusted its rate demands accordingly. At the end of last century the willow pest saw fly put the $250 million stopbank network of Hawke's Bay at risk.
A $9 million programme was put in place to remedy and future-proof the situation with new cultivars of trees. This money was borrowed and the loan was paid down last year.
This was a specific outcome that was quantified, planned and financed with transparency. Delivered successfully by a science- and fact-based organisation. Of interest it is estimated the stopbanks protect around $14 billion of public asset and private business on the plains.
The dividend to the council from Napier Port next financial year is $10 million.
There is also around $80 million in the bank (currently).
There is also provision for $70 million borrowing over the next 10 years.
So with all the money washing through the system it is challenging to see the proposed 19 per cent increase being either prudent or necessary going forward. Especially when it is going on the general rate which will jump by around 60 per cent in the 2018-19 financial year.
Except for the regional take for civil defence, we are suggesting initiatives that have mostly in some shape or form been tried before. Or in the case of the future farming trust ($650,000 over the next three years) actually compete with various farm levy-funded programmes already under way.
Everything put up to make an extra difference is very light on detail. So the question you the ratepayer needs to ask is what will I be getting for my extra rate commitment?
In previous plans, when times were tough in the Hawke's Bay economy, there was no rate increase.
However, regional rates have generally sat at around the 2-3 per cent mark per annum. With all the extra income outside of rates this has previously been seen as a prudent and sustainable rate increase.
This is a slick marketing campaign by the council. Advertised and video presented comments that do not adequately explain scientific or fact-based proposals.
The ability to stick council hands in your pockets and extract rates is a rare privilege and should be treated as such. Ten per cent last year on top of the proposed 19 per cent this year adds up to a council not respecting that privilege.
Tell us what you think in the coming weeks in the form of a submission. This is the year to have your voice heard. Submissions close on April 23.
Fenton Wilson is a councillor with the Hawke's Bay Regional Council.
Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
