Mike Cranstone: Whanganui Federated Farmers submissions to Horizons and district council Long Term Plans

Whanganui Federated Farmers president Mike Cranstone will be holding councils on his patch to account, and will be asking each to justify certain aspects of their Long-Term Plans. Photo / Supplied

Opinion:

Whanganui Federated Farmers president Mike Cranstone provides a summary of submissions made to the Long Term Plans for the Whanganui District Council, Horizons Regional Council and Rangitikei District Council.

The submission process is not a job for the faint hearted, so I am grateful to have the likes of Tim Matthews, on our executive, and Coralee, our Regional Policy Advisor, to help get the submissions together.

For the Whanganui District Council and Horizons, rates have been forecast to increase by around 5 per cent and 8 per cent respectively.

These are considerable average increases, which we know means even bigger increases for many in the rural zone (driven up by council reliance on property value as a proxy for ratepayer contributions).

We will be reminding council about this inequity and asking that council more fairly shift contributions to those who will directly benefit from council services.

Our submissions also step through the various projects put forward by the Whanganui District Council and Horizons, asking that the nice-to-have non-essential projects are stalled until the council can address some of the more urgent work, which for Horizons includes implementing the Government's Essential Freshwater Package.

Increasing costs to implement central Government regulatory changes, coupled with the
ongoing impact of Covid-19 are untimely challenges for councils.

We appreciate that for many councils, the pressure to invest in new and upgraded infrastructure while also maintaining existing infrastructure, is forcing tough conversations to be had about nice to have services compared to core services.

For most of us rural ratepayers, this conversation is long overdue.

Rangitikei is also proposing a higher than normal average rates increase of around 7 per cent, which, for many pastoral farms, will mean increases of 25 per cent. A massive increase despite no additional services or benefits.

Federated Farmers will therefore be asking council how it can justify this level of increase, given that rates are a charge for services, and are supposed to reflect the access to, and benefit derived by ratepayers from council services.

This is a key principle, reinforced in 2019 by the Productivity Commission and a key
provision in s.101 of the Local Government Act 2002 that sets out funding principles for local authorities.

Feds are also concerned to see that Rangitikei is proposing to reduce the amount of rates
recovered by the Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC), from $610 currently, to $500.

Federated Farmers considers the UAGC to be a fair way for councils to rate for services
that provide an indistinguishable amount of benefit across ratepayer groups.

Higher use of UAGCs also reduces reliance on the property value general rate as a funding mechanism and flattens the distribution of rates bills between high to low value properties.

In these turbulent times, financial constraint is a key discipline.

Every household and business have their wish list of projects, and councils should also and have the fortitude to make tough decisions when allocating spending from what should be a fixed income.