Wow. I travelled to Rotorua last Friday (you may not know I now live in Matata) and was shocked to hear the aggro about the article in the Rotorua Daily Post on Friday.
The response to the news that the city's debt crisis is more than anyone imagined and thatthere would need to be rate increases to cover it, was greeted with "Man this p's me off", "The real annoyance is, how did these councillors not know this? What do they get paid for?" The feelings were running high.
But the interesting thing to me was the revelation rates are set to go up 3 per cent per year until 2030. When I read the article it led one to believe this increase was just to service the debt. Wow. I did some sums. If you currently had a rate bill of $2500 your rate bill in 2030 would be $4132.12 - that's a massive 65.28 per cent increase.
Grow Rotorua just got shot in the foot. Who is going to sign up to this level of increases and only to cover existing debt. What about the inflation factor, what about the capital works postponed and can't wait until 2030. Are they saying that those increases will be added to the 3 per cent and the 3 per cent could go to 6 per cent including inflation? How did this happen?
We had a CEO who was being paid huge money to manage this city, in fact it's reported that he was in the top six when it came to remuneration of council CEOs in this country. What responsibility rests with the past councillors? Where is the old mayor who stood in front of us and declared we had no debt crisis? They can't hide behind the old excuse "we didn't know". It's your job to know. You can't use that excuse just as ignorance of the law is not an excuse in court. You get paid to know and the buck stops with you.
Your ignorance and belief in the propaganda that was flowing from the CEO's and mayor's office has handicapped this region. It's very hard to Grow Rotorua when trying to manage this level of debt. For it to be advertised to all that if you shift here you will be hit with a 3 per cent compounding rate increase just to service historical debt. Now that isn't any incentive to 'Live, Work and Play' here, is it?
- Rod Meharry is a former member of the Government's Small Business Advisory Group and a previous small business owner now looking for new challenges.
