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Posts Tagged ‘rates’

Hide hoses down Auckland water fears

Posted by Phil Twyford on August 31st, 2010

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide has intervened in the Auckland mayoral and council elections with a carefully contrived announcement on water rates.

You would think water rates would be decided and announced by the new Auckland Council. The election is, after all, only six weeks away. And the water company, is after all, owned  by the Council.

But no, Mr Hide yesterday trumpeted a new water rate that will see all Auckland houses pay the same tariff of $1.30 per 1000 litres of water.

Asked why he was announcing it now, he replied because Aucklanders have been “anxious about water” charges.

Why have they been anxious about water charges? Because the Government wants to roll out volumetric or user pays pricing for waste-water expected to result in hefty increases for most Aucklanders. And because the centre-right Citizens and Ratepayers ticket has the same policy. And the C&R mayoral candidate Mr Banks has been taking heat on this issue.

Mr Hide was happy to announce the new rate on water piped to the home, but he was keeping quiet on the new rate for waste water which is the one that is likely to go up significantly if it gets the full user-pays treatment. If he was going to announce one I don’t see why he couldn’t have announced both, because Watercare has had a full year to do the calculations on both.

The farsighted Mr Hide has legislated that waste water charges, and general rates, won’t be going up until mid-2012 which just happens to be after the mayoral and council elections, and after next year’s general election.

By the time the new waste water and general rates kick in, the Auckland Council will have been in place for 18 months and Mr Hide will be able to wash his hands of any responsibility. He is hoping the Council will have to carry the can for the structures and budgets he put in place 18 months before.

If in 2012 the waste water charges and general rates do go up, as most Aucklanders believe they will, with any luck we won’t have to listen to Mr Hide blaming the Auckland Council.  He will be long gone by then.

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Filed under: Auckland, local government, water
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Stop him before he kills again

Posted by Phil Twyford on October 26th, 2009

I’ve been thinking about Rodney Hide that it was a case of someone stop him before he kills again. Having made a hash of the Super City, and now wreaking havoc with ACC, the prospect of his review of the Local Government Act began to seem like one act of mayhem too many.

I’d heard via officials that his paper to be discussed at Cabinet tomorrow contained draconian proposals to curb Council activities. But then Bernard Orsman reports in today’s Herald that Hide has backed off from his core services agenda:

Mr Hide yesterday said he was conscious of working with a centrist, pragmatic National Party and needed its support to pass changes to the Local Government Act 2002. That meant he was no longer pursuing the removal of the social, environmental and cultural “wellbeings” in the act that, he previously said, had pushed councils into providing services beyond their core role.

Sounds like his coalition partner has told Mr Hide to pull his head in.  Instead of the core services agenda, the Minister wants to make Councils open their books before elections much like Treasury’s pre-election fiscal update. No mention in the story of the idea he flagged back in April of Councils being required to hold referenda on significant or irreversible decisions. But given his opposition to referenda on the Super City, and on privatisation, maybe he has gone off the whole referendum thing?

In any case Hide is hoping his proposed changes to the Local Government Act, whatever they are, will turn back the rising tide of rates increases. No one likes to see rates going up endlessly, and no one is going to quibble with a bit more transparency and accountability in the local government sector. But if Hide, in spite of his soothing words in the Herald, persists with the nutty rate-capping and core services agenda he floated in April then he will surely have a fight on his hands.

The softening up began at the Local Government and Environment select committee on Thursday when officials presented a report showing councils’ operating costs will increase 39 per cent over the next 10 years. Over the same period councils’ planned capital expenditure will total $31.4 billion, and total debt is forecast to rise to $10.8 billion.  The report met with synchronised oohing and ahhing from the Government members.

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Filed under: local government
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