Whanganui Federated Farmers unhappy with district council’s proposed rates increases

Tim Matthews (centre) with new Whanganui Federated Farmers president Robert Ervine and councillor Kate Joblin. Photo / Bevan Conley

Whanganui Federated Farmers executive member Tim Matthews has come out swinging during a public hearing on the Whanganui District Council’s Annual Plan.

In a submission, Federated Farmers said the proposed average rate increase for farming of 7.8 per cent was “not prudent or sustainable in the present economic climate”.

Matthews told the hearing farmers could not put up their prices to meet the extra costs everybody else in the community was facing.

“We are price-takers and we are forced to accept what the freezing works, what the people buying our wool and what the milk payout is, based on international exports.

“While we have been having reasonable returns in the last year or two, our expenses have gone up significantly.”

According to the submission, Federated Farmers’ preferred rates were capped at existing levels or reduced.

“Unlike many other submitters, we are actually asking you to do less, I guess, or [work] more efficiently with what you’ve got,” Matthews said.

“Rather than asking for things, we are saying, ‘Look, be really business-like about how you run this council’.”

He said Federated Farmers was also asking for an increase in rates on production forestry properties because the impacts of forestry harvesting were “substantially different” to those from running pastoral properties.

“[Forestry] happens on low-use roads, in the main,” Matthews said.

“They are the ones that are small, probably metalled, and only have a few people that live on them.

“Are we fairly rating the two different enterprises - agricultural and forestry - given [forestry’s] use of the roads?”

The council’s 2023/24 funding impact statement says a targeted rate on exotic forestry properties will collect $155,250 for remediating roads used by vehicles associated with plantations in the district.

Federated Farmers’ submission was that might not be enough.

“The draft Annual Plan specifies around $300,000 as the cost of repairing roads; however, there is no breakdown as to where and what causes the damage that needs repairing,” it said.

“Federated Farmers is concerned that ratepayers are subsidising the cost of forestry harvest through paying for general road maintenance and recommends the council adopt an increased and more realistic roading differential rate figure for exotic forestry properties.”

Outside the farming sector, the organisation recommended the council remove the Annual Plan allocation of $170,000 to “relocate the homeless”.

In February, the council agreed to set up a homeless support site at 83 Taupō Quay while it worked on a permanent solution.

“We’ve made a possibly novel suggestion - that perhaps the big box retailers who compete with Whanganui-owned retailers in town might contribute to housing those sorts of people,” Matthews said.

“It’s a bit of a social licence to do business in Whanganui when all their profits head out of town.”

He said there needed to be a better way of accounting for the benefit local businesses got from things like the Sarjeant Gallery.

“We’re disappointed to see that the Sarjeant art gallery looks like [it will have] a $10 million cost overrun.

“It’s the biggest item on your books for this Annual Plan round, and you need to find some way of profiting, shall we say, from that expenditure.

“Should we be looking at the businesses that benefit from that expenditure and perhaps have a targeted rate that might redress the balance a little bit?”