Hefty rates hike plan for Masterton

Masterton ratepayers are staring down the barrel of hefty rates hikes if a draft annual plan about to go to public consultation is finally adopted.
On average residential properties in urban Masterton will have rate increases in the next financial year of around 6.3 per cent, and rural properties an average increase of slightly less than 10 per cent.
At a full meeting of Masterton District Council councillors were told that increased roading costs were largely to blame for the need to hike up the rate take with an additional $487,000 needed.
This was mainly to cater for roads in the rural areas.
Costs in many other areas, including $76,000 on the rec centre operational budget, sewerage and stormwater, water supply, parks, council-owned properties, district promotion and development and the Masterton District Library also contributing to the need to put rates up.
On the other side of the ledger there are projected savings on regulatory services, solid waste costs and sports fields.
The council's finance department staff attempted to soften annual plan expenditure by putting forward an alternative plan that would have seen $30,000 cut from the community grants budget, the same amount from the underground power fund and $50,000 from the footpaths fund for the central business district.
After considerable debate councillors threw out the alternative figures, opting to go with the full draft that reinstated the money to all three funds.
Councillor Brent Goodwin was especially vocal over the costs on the rec centre, saying he felt as if he had been "conned" into supporting the building of the pools, the understanding being that the operating costs would be kept within the allocated $800,000 a year.
Instead he now learned that it would cost an extra $76,000.
Mr Goodwin pushed for an increase in pool charges, saying figures showed the greatly enhanced facility was only reaping about 66 cents more a swimmer than the old pools.
He was supported by councillor Derek Daniell, who said that Aratoi also needed to come under scrutiny.
It was getting $226,000 a year in ratepayers money and had "no commercial discipline to put on exhibitions that people actually want to see".
Increased library costs of $32,000 also drew comment.
Several councillors said that in this day and age it was unrealistic to allow adults to borrow books for no cost.
Books were much more expensive than they used to be, and although membership of the library was free a charge of $1 a book was not unreasonable.
Councillor Rod McKenzie said it was fair enough that children got books free.
He said free entry to Aratoi was "unaffordable" and that the council could not continue to put rates up to the extent that rural ratepayers were facing 10 per cent hikes.
The $30,000 trimmed from the community grants budget was reinstated largely at the urgings of councillor Chris Peterson.
He was supported by councillor Jonathan Hooker who said it was an "unfortunate reality" that there was a great need to fund community organisations that were having to shoulder increasing workloads in the community.