Rate rises fair, says defiant ARC chief

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Gwen Bull is sitting in a comfortable chair in her spacious office, looking not the least bit worried about the anger over the Auckland Regional Council's first direct rates demand.

"We think the way we have gone is the absolute fairest way we could go," she says.

The ARC chairwoman and former ballroom dancing champion points to a graph which shows the lion's share of 800 calls to a rates hotline are queries about setting up a direct debit payment.

Only 27 are irate calls.

She is unmoved by the angry emails to the Herald. They numbered "only 100", out of 460,000 ratepayers.

Another graph at her fingertips, which she does not quote, suggests half the calls to the council were pleasant or happy about the rates increase. The rest ranged from neutral to very irate.

Mrs Bull quotes more figures. Payments by midday yesterday totalled $2.047 million and 2064 people had completed direct debit forms in the first two days.

She won't say everyone is happy with the new rates system but wants to point out that the ARC's figures tell a different story from that dominating media.

The chairwoman, who took over the reins at the ARC in February last year after chairman Phil Warren died, is making no apologies for adopting a rating system that does not distinguish between business and residential ratepayers.

"I believe it is the best (system)," she says. "We think it is the fairest, and without the differentials and a uniform annual general charge it is the easiest to manage.

She says council comparisons found little difference between rating on capital value and land value with differentials.

But people are facing increases of 200 per cent or more under the no-differential policy.

"Not all of them," replies Mrs Bull. "I was speaking to a whole heap of people at the Federated Farmers conference last night, and their rates have gone down. So not everybody has had an increase."

"North Shore has had a nine-and-a-half times business differential subsidising residents up to now.

"We cannot justify charging a business more than we can charge a residence. We have to rate across the whole region.

"How do we know who runs a business at home?"

A complaint by many Rodney and North Shore residents that they are being charged for transport services they do not receive or use, brings another firm response from the chairwoman, who lives in a rural area near Papakura.

"North Shore may not have rail but they certainly have a busway coming up," she says.

"They certainly have increased bus services. They certainly have some ferry services that we don't subsidise but there are feeder buses going to those ferries that in one case cost the ARC $17 a passenger. They can't say they don't get the services."

Mrs Bull concedes transport levy anomalies exist in some areas. Those would be addressed this year with community groups.

Many feel the ARC called for submissions but ignored what people were saying.

"No, it is not true," she replies. "We had 592 submissions. We listened to about 200 of those and as a result of this we made some changes in the transport area in particular."

She acknowledges the changes were minor, but says submissions were fairly evenly weighted for and against the rating system.

"I wouldn't say there was wholesale acceptance of it but people could see that we were trying to make a difference in transport.

"Transport has been identified as the number one issue in the Auckland region.

"It is a targeted rate, it cannot go anywhere else and we are putting our money where our mouth is."