Four focus areas revealed in NPDC's $3b 10-year work plan

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Local News Our Work

PUBLISHED: 16 DEC 2020

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The battle for the ratepayer dollar has begun with our draft 10-year budget released and the spotlight on four fronts over the summer.

After early conversations with the residents, with more than 9,400 answers to our call for feedback, Mayor Neil Holdom and the Councillors will spend the summer deciding what’s in and what’s out.

The proposed 10-year work plan will target four areas:

Fixing the Plumbing,
Tightening our Belts,
Planting our Place,
Paying it Forward for our kids.

If it gets the green light, it would mean a total rates rise of 12% in the first year and a 6.1% rise on average over the next nine years.

For the average urban household, that’s an increase of about 9.7% or $231 for the next financial year.

Mayor Holdom says the draft 10-year budget, worth about $3b, is about reinvesting in and clearing the backlog of water infrastructure upgrades, a problem that councils are facing around the country.
“Since the Global Financial Crisis, there has been a chronic and systematic underinvestment in these basic services that our residents expect us to look after, deliver safely and not run down.

Everyone wants safe drinking water and sewage kept in pipes, not polluting our beautiful home, and that’s why I’m proud this proposed plan sets out real steps to rebuild these critical foundations of our wonderful Lifestyle Capital,” says Mayor Holdom.

“As well as Fixing the Plumbing, we’ll be Tightening our Belts to maximise operational efficiency, given the current uncertainty of the global pandemic and looking at work programmes to Plant our Place, such as planting 34 hectares of urban forest across the District and creating a community fund for indigenous planting. This summer I urge you to read the draft plan and let us know what you think.”

The proposed 10-year plan isn’t set in stone and will go out for public feedback before Councillors make any final decisions in about six months or so.

Our staff will be hitting the street and marae in March to get feedback.

How the battle for each ratepayer dollar will play out - some of the big projects vying for inclusion:

Three Water upgrades - $248m
Transport upgrades - $153m
Multi-sport hub development - $40m
Urenui and Ōnaero sewer system - $30m
Water meters - $16m
Walkway extension to Waitara - $26m
Waitara stormwater upgrade - $20m
Taranaki Traverse - $1m
Planting 34 hectares of urban forest - $2m
Electric vehicles for NPDC fleet - $1m
Te Korowai o Tane: planting indigenous species fund - $2m

If this draft plan gets the green light, we’re looking at rates increase of 12% and a 6.1% rise on average over the next nine years.
For the average urban household that’s about 9.7% or $231 in the 2021/22 year.
For the first year our operational budget is proposed at about $176m and capital budget is $78m.
Another feature of this proposed plan is more debt funding to look after long term assets like our water network, after years of underinvestment.
Debt funding is a bit like a revolving credit bank account, which we top up and use as a rates smoothing tool for the short term or next few years.
We’re proposing to debt fund $43m of three water upgrades (renewals), to be repaid over 25 years, so we share the burden among the different generations of ratepayers and help bridge the gap.
One way to minimise the cost to ratepayers is to look at how much we charge the public to use our facilities and services.
For example, we’re proposing to increase our pool fees by a dollar; eg adults from $5.50 now up to $6.50 and school aged children from $4 currently up to $5. Learn to swim bulk lessons have also been increased
We are thinking about increasing our burial plot fees; eg a double depth burial plot from $3,703 to $4,163.
Plus the associated burial costs (internment fees) from $1,991 for an adult to $2,389.
Another option may be to reduce operational hours at some of our public facilities, like the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre or our libraries.
Other levers we could consider would be using our reserves, creating new revenue streams, selling low-use land and buildings and identifying further operational efficiencies.

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Four focus areas revealed in NPDC's $3b 10-year work plan

PUBLISHED: 16 DEC 2020

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Four focus areas revealed in NPDC's $3b 10-year work plan

PUBLISHED: 16 DEC 2020

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Overview

Fixing the plumbing: water upgrades, maintenance, inspections, clean rivers and streams.

Fixing the plumbing: water meters

Fixing the plumbing: Urenui and Ōnaero sewerage and Waitara stormwater

Tightening our belts

Planting our Place

Paying it forward for our kids

The dollars in a nutshell

Related news

A life saver for tradies: new million dollar waste sorting facility to open for region's businesses

NPDC to discuss Central Government’s Three Waters Reforms at Public Meeting

Historic touches in place as Pukekura Park transformed for footy

Contact us

Visit us

Navigate

Useful links

Our NPDC family

Phone

Email