Wellington City Council is finalising its draft 10-year budget today and service cuts are being proposed in the scramble to find more money for the capital’s leaking pipes. Georgina Campbell takes a look at some of the tough decisions Mayor Tory Whanau and her councillors
Wellington City Council budget crunch: Libraries, swimming pools and fireworks under threat
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Opening hours at Tawa Pool would also be cut from 15 hours a day on weekdays and 12 hours a day on weekends to just eight hours a day.
Khandallah Pool could be closed completely. The pool needs to be rebuilt but the cost has escalated from $8.1 million to $11.7m.
Instead, council officials are proposing to close the pool and landscape the site for $4.5m - a project that would also include more flood mitigation and a new entranceway to the park.
Khandallah Pool is used the least out of the summer pools in the Wellington region with an average of 10,339 visits a year over the past four seasons.
Library hours
Suburban libraries, apart from Johnsonville, face a reduction in opening hours equivalent to one day a week. This would save $400,000 (0.08 per cent rates impact).
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There is also a proposal to close the Arapaki Library and council service centre. Arapaki was designed as a pop-up solution after the closure of Wellington’s central library, Te Matapihi, which is being earthquake-strengthened and is due to reopen in 2026.
Closing the service centre would mean moving services online and to the phone, leaving the council with no front-facing service. Other services such as recycling bin collection would be moved to libraries.
The early closure of the temporary library and service centre would save $300,000 (0.06 per cent impact).
Fireworks and New Year’s Eve event
Wellington City Council’s signature New Year’s Eve event is on the chopping block which council officials admit would be a “very visible reduction of the creative programme”.
This would save $290,000 (0.06 per cent impact). This year’s festivities included live music, a kids’ countdown, and a blast of fireworks at midnight.
There is also a proposal to discontinue the council’s annual fireworks display which has previously been planned to coincide with events such as the Fifa Women’s World Cup and Matariki.
This would save $200,000 (0.04 per cent impact).
Wellington Airport shares
The council could sell its 34 per cent in Wellington Airport, worth $278m.
There is concern the council’s investment portfolio is exposed to considerable risk in the event of a significant natural event like an earthquake.
The council is proposing to reinvest the money in a new perpetual investment fund that would be protected against future councils withdrawing the capital to pay down debt.
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Let’s Get Wellington Moving projects scaled back and delayed
Some projects from the cancelled $7.4 billion Let’s Get Wellington Moving transport plan are being brought in-house by the council.
The Thorndon Quay and Hutt Road project is among them. The plan was to install part-time bus lanes in both directions along these roads and a two-way cycleway.
However, the council is now proposing to ditch the Hutt Road portion of the project to save $10m.
A plan to pedestrianise the Golden Mile is also affected. The council is proposing to progress with construction on Courtenay Place and defer $83m worth of work on Lambton Quay, Manners and Willis Streets.
The full project is now proposed to be completed over 5 years. This will be done alongside a value engineering assessment to identify further cost savings.
Forecast rates increase if all cuts are approved
2024: 15.4 per cent (17 per cent including the sludge levy)
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2025: 11.8 per cent (14.6 per cent with levy)
2026: 12.5 per cent (16.3 per cent with levy)
2027: 5.7 per cent (10.2 per cent with levy)
2028: 5.3 per cent (9.6 per cent with levy)
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
