Rates protest by Hihi residents

The Hihi Residents' and Ratepayers' Association is advising property owners there to withhold the additional sewerage rates sought by the Far North District Council for the 2012/2013 year while a complaint lodged with the Local Government Ombudsman's Office on Tuesday is investigated.

The crux of the complaint was the council's failure to furnish details of a targeted sewerage rate collected from residents over the past 19 years, spokesman Roger Marsh said.

Payments made from 1993 had been imposed on the basis of defraying a council loan of $86,717 for an upgrade to the existing scheme, many property owners opting to pay a lump sum, but within three years all property owners were being levied an additional sewerage rate to fund a replacement waste water treatment plant, which had yet to be built, he said.

Mr Marsh said a resident's inquiry in June 2009 regarding progress with the new plant was responded to by Far North District Council CEO David Edmunds, who stated that: "Following the issuing of the resource consent a number of strategic issues have arisen relating to the technical viability of the required solution and the impact this has had on getting sewer subsidy funding."

Residents' suspicions that that actually meant the project had been shelved had been confirmed by Mayor Wayne Brown's subsequent pronouncement that there were only 50 people living in Hihi anyway.

Property owners had been further angered when, following the council's signalling of substantial sewerage rate increases for Hihi, "under the guise of fairer rates'," details of prior expenditure obtained from the council indicated that the rates collected had exceeded capital expenditure by well over 200 per cent.

"Despite this, the council appears to have assigned Hihi a debt burden of $229,468, presumably from works carried out elsewhere," Mr Marsh said.

"As such the council's demands for substantial rate increases deserve an independent review."

The current year's sewerage charge at Hihi is $917, a 37 per cent increase on last year's $669. The district council's current proposal for the 2013/14 year would lift than another 88 per cent, to $1725.