High-value houses slugged

Oliver and Gerarda Bossard. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

"Why is the council punishing us?" ask Oliver and Gerarda Bossard, a retired St Heliers couple confronted with a 19 per cent rates increase this year from the Auckland City Council.

For Mr and Mrs Bossard that means finding an extra $352 a year for their council rates on a pension of $393 a week.

It means cutting down on food, scrounging for firewood and having fewer lights on in their modest 1940s home.

The Bossards, in their late 70s, are typical of thousands of residents caught out by an ideological shift in rating policy being implemented by City Vision-Labour councillors with the backing of Mayor Dick Hubbard.

After three years of the John Banks-led council evening out rates at the expense of low-value home owners, Mr Hubbard, City Vision leader Bruce Hucker and allies are reversing the burden at the expense of high-value home owners.

Those most affected are people who live in expensive property on fixed incomes. Mr Bossard's family bought their property in 1940 for £900.

Today it is prime real estate with a valuation of $740,000. The rates are $1923. From July, the rates will rise 19 per cent to $2275.

"The proposed rate increase is outrageous and unacceptable," Mrs Bossard told councillors at a public hearing yesterday on the annual plan and budget.

"We are pensioners living on a low fixed income.

"Our lovely 64-year-old home is the only good thing we have. Next year properties are due to be revalued so we can expect another massive rates increase," she said.

Back at their home in Edmund St, Mr Bossard said 14 new houses within 100m had been built in the past five years. The council got extra rates but he had seen "nothing whatsoever" in the way of new infrastructure.

Infill housing and inadequate drainage caused a burst sewer pipe in their backyard at the weekend but nothing had been done to fix it, he said.

Plans by the council for an overall rates increase of 9.7 per cent - the first overall rates increase above inflation for six years - is creating the most heat since the Auckland Regional Council rates revolt of two years ago.

Glendowie resident Simon Jones, who faces a 19.5 per cent rates increase, called "Hubbard and Hucker and all the liberal clowns who manage this city ... a disgrace".

Remuera resident Alan Mayne, facing a 24.4 per cent increase, lambasted councillors for "socking me as a defenceless ratepayer".

Council plans to ask ratepayers for $1 million to get back into housing through partnerships with Housing New Zealand and other housing providers have also raised heckles and widespread advice from business groups to leave housing to the Government.

Rates rises

Auckland City rates:

* 9.7 per cent overall increase.

* 20 per cent-plus increase for high-value properties.

* Ring-fenced increases for transport (5 per cent), heritage and urban design (0.5 per cent), open spaces and volcanic cones (1 per cent) and community development and housing (0.5 per cent).

* Cutting uniform annual general charge from $189 to $95.