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Small rates increase for the coming year


Small rates increase for the coming year

Our Council is keeping average rates increases District-wide to 1.4% this financial year.

At its meeting today, our Council adopted the work programmes and budgets for 1 July 2016 to 30 June 2017.

"We've achieved a realistic Annual Plan, with a prudent eye on costs, that allows us to keep largely on track with the direction and priorities set in our 2015-2025 Long Term Plan," says Mayor Glenn Leach.

This is our first Annual Plan drawn up under recent legislation that does not require councils to hold a public consultation if there are no significant or material changes in budgets and work activity from the last Long Term Plan.

That was the case with this Annual Plan, so no formal consultation was held. Instead, our Community Boards each held public information sessions to let people know what to expect for the new financial year in their area.

There are some small differences from the Long Term Plan which reflect changes in circumstances through more detailed cost estimates and tender prices. The Annual Plan briefly explains the notable differences.

Some of these projects belong in our economic development activity stream. The costs for this have gone up in this year's Annual Plan compared to what was projected in the Long Term Plan. Much of this is due to timing, as spending on some projects has been delayed from the 2015/16 financial year to 2016/17. For example, $1,060,000 in spending on the Great Walks project has been moved from 2015/16 to 2016/17. Part of the Great Walks work is extending the seal on Lees Road and building a new car park to alleviate car parking issues in Hahei. To do this, $160,000 has been transferred from 2015/16 to 2016/17.

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For more information the Annual Plan, go to our web page www.tcdc.govt.nz/ap2016


Staff costs

In today's Council meeting, Tairua-Pauanui Community Board Chair Bob Renton asked about an increase in personnel costs of $1.6M when compared to the 2015/16 budget.

We currently have just over 200 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff. The 2015-2025 LTP provided for 203 in the 2016/17 year while the 2016/17 Annual Plan envisages 210.6 FTEs.

Chief Financial Officer Steve Baker explains the increase was due to a number of reasons but should also be looked at in conjunction with the movement in other operating expenses.

• Anticipated CPI (inflation) movement
• Significantly greater uptake in Kiwisaver than that anticipated when the LTP was put together
• Investment in building consenting and inspections resources and those of resource consenting to front foot the increased flow of these consents as the economy shakes off remnants the Global Financial Crisis
• Provide additional resourcing to its bylaws arm to maintain the natural characteristics of our District (freedom camping and the like)
• Community Empowerment
• Internal project manager resources while delivering key projects such as the Great walks Mary's Beach Wharf development and Williamson Park to name a few
• We have bought in-house (short term) some consultancy costs in the area of Information Technology

Fees and charges

Part of every Annual Plan is a review of fees and charges, and we have some changes for the new financial year.

The new fees take effect from 1 July and will be available to view on our web pagewww.tcdc.govt.nz/fees from Friday.

We set fees and charges for all sorts of services that are not appropriate to go on everybody's rates, such as consent fees, and are better charged as user-pays.

There has been a small increase from $64 to $70 to register a dog, for example, and some of our cemetery fees have also risen.

We have also increased the amount we are charging for urgent Land Information Memorandum (LIM) requests from $320 to $420. Non-urgent requests remain at $220. With the increase in property sales in the Coromandel, our LIM team is getting swamped with urgent requests. The increase in urgent fees better reflects the cost to Council in processing a LIM in the tighter urgent timeframe.

Besides the normal review of fees and charges, we were required under legislation to hold a public consultation on new fees under the Food Act 2014 and on changes to some of our administrative fees which were set under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). This occured in early 2016.

A central feature of the new Food Act is a sliding scale where businesses that are at higher risk, from a food safety point of view, will operate under more stringent food safety requirements and checks than lower-risk food businesses. The new Act also recognises that each business is different - unlike the old Food Act 1981 and its one-size-fits-all approach to food safety. The new Act means that a corner dairy which reheats meat pies won't be treated the same way as a meat-pie manufacturer.

For more, see www.tcdc.govt.nz/foodact14

The slight increases to the fees and charges under the RMA are to better reflect the actual cost of providing services such as processing building and resource consent applications.

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