User-pays approach on council's agenda

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The Auckland City Council is considering an annual rubbish charge of $125, which would hit the owners of lower-valued properties.

Less than six months after public anger over the introduction of half-sized wheelie bins, the new council will consider the rubbish charge and scrapping organic rubbish collections at a budget setting meeting on Monday

Council staff have summarised three options for rubbish - the status quo, a flat charge of $125 or a partial charge of $62.50 - and have recommended a fixed charge for 157,000 households and businesses.

Councillors will also consider staff advice to scrap organic waste collections a year earlier than planned.

Council figures show that funding rubbish with a fixed charge of $125 a year would benefit businesses and those living in homes worth more than $640,000.

It would also be fairer for people living in single-title multiple flats, who get only one bin between them under the present system and have to pay $185 for each additional bin.

Someone with a home worth $180,000 would be $90 a year worse off, paying $689.15 a year in rates and charges, compared with $599.65 now.

The owner of a $290,000 home would experience a 7 per cent rise in council costs, from $966.11 to $1033.90, with the shift in funding from general rates to a form of user-pays.

Under the user-pays option everyone would pay $125 and the money generated - about $18 million - would go to cutting general rates by 5.9 per cent.

For a big business like Sky City casino, which pays $3.1 million a year rates, this would mean a saving of $183,000.

The previous council voted in June to review the cost of rubbish removal, including a uniform annual general charge, at this year's meeting to set the budget.

Finance director David Rankin said yesterday that the review of the organic waste coupon system was a management initiative.

The system was introduced to encourage households to use the old 240-litre wheelie bins for garden and organic waste and reduce the amount of green waste going to landfills.

Council staff said the system of giving each household six coupons a year for organic waste collections had contributed to a 35 per cent reduction in waste going to landfills.

Staff said the scheme was "an expensive adjunct" to the core rubbish service costing $2.05 million a year.

They have recommended reducing the scheme to three coupons next year and scrapping it in 2003.

The leader of the left on the council, Dr Bruce Hucker, said the fixed rubbish charge amounted to a dramatic tax on people on low and moderate incomes. It would shift $7.1 million in rates from business onto residential ratepayers.

"It will be interesting to see the extent to which uniform annual charges and a move to user-pays are going to be a surrogate for a rates freeze," Dr Hucker said.

The deputy mayor and Auckland Citizens & Ratepayers Now leader, David Hay, who unsuccessfully tried to introduce a $100 uniform rubbish charge in June, could not be reached yesterday to comment on the new proposals.