Editorial: Why is our council in strife?

Mayor Steve Chadwick

They are the words our ratepayers dreaded.

The Rotorua District Council is in "an unsustainable financial position".

The outcome is we can expect a 3 per cent annual rates increase until at least 2030.

The revelation was reported in Saturday's Rotorua Daily Post with the council's new chief financial officer, Dave Foster, telling councillors it was "absolutely critical" to cut back on spending if the council were serious about reducing debt.

It means works that have been planned and promised will need to be deferred.

Mr Foster said small rates increases in previous years and mounting debt in the past 10 years had left the council in this predicament.

Mayor Steve Chadwick described the cutback as "drastic action" but said the debt was worse than previously understood and we needed to pull back hard now.

What astounds me is long-standing Rotorua district councillors Glenys Searancke and Charles Sturt said they were completely unaware of the council's bad financial situation.

I'm not saying I don't believe them, but how can this be?

I've searched our newspaper's files and here's what we have reported.

In February last year, district councillors said they wanted another year of low rates increases, with some councillors favouring no increases at all. Question. Did they have no clue about our debt levels? If not, why not? What do we elect them for?

In June last year, the Annual Plan for 2013/2014 was adopted and we were promised one of the lowest rates increase in recent history of under 1 per cent. Why on earth did we allow that? What were our councillors not told?

It seems our new chief executive officer, chief financial controller and mayor are more realistic about the future but I'm still confused as to how we are faced with such a dilemma.