Mayor urges restraint on spending

After three years of successfully reducing the average rate, Coromandel's Community Boards have been briefed by Mayor Glenn Leach this week about the need to continue exercising financial restraint as they plan capital projects for the next ten years, or face a significant rates increase.

Mayor Leach says ratepayers will have to pay cost overruns from the building of the Eastern Seaboard Wastewater Treatment Plants, even though they were completed in 2009.

Council has received a draft report calculating lower capacity in some aspects of the Plants than was modelled for Council in previous 2009 and 2012 Long Term Plans. This issue, along with subsequent incorrect growth assumptions used before the Plants were built, along with the overruns from additional capital works on these Plants, is now coming home to the ratepayer. A full report will be delivered to Council before the end of the year.

"On the basis of emerging capacity figures, Council has no legal choice but to transfer more of the remaining debt onto ratepayers," says Mayor Leach. "The growth projections given to the previous Council by independent professional experts, to make decisions to build the treatment plants was flawed," says Mayor Leach. "So we are now having to deal with this."

"We are working hard to soften this impact. More public information and the history of the Plants and the costs will follow," says the Mayor.

In his briefing, Mayor Leach used this example to remind elected members to concentrate on the must-haves when it comes to projects rather than the nice-to-haves.

"I'm preaching restraint," says Mayor Glenn Leach.

"We need to keep doing what we suggested when we were first elected. We need to prioritise where our money is spent."

Mayor Leach praised his team and staff for achieving a satisfying reduction of average rates over the past three years, to the point of reaching the lowest operating cost per rateable property in the Waikato.

Long Term Plan Consultation

Council is preparing its next Long Term Plan (2015-2025). With a number of Coromandel areas now rebounding after the global economic downturn, the shopping list of requests for capital projects from some community groups is growing rapidly.

"If a project isn't in our upcoming LTP then we can't get Development Contributions for it," says Mayor Leach. "Our three anchor projects - the Coromandel Great Walks Project, Hauraki Rail Trail and Coromandel Harbour Facilities project - is not going ahead without government funding," he says, reminding elected members of the work Council has put in to avoid unnecessary burdens on ratepayers.

The first draft of Council's Long Term Plan will be available in March for public consultation.

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