The 130,000 reasons why Gore ratepayers deserve to be annoyed

At the same time as councillors are proposing a $130k review on Tuesday they were asking staff what could be cut to ensure a 11.56% rate rise could be softened.

OPINION: Gore ratepayers; you have every right to be an annoyed bunch right now.

Back-to-back agenda items at Tuesday’s extraordinary Gore District Council meeting simply highlighted that.

The council has an estimated $130k review in the pipeline to “restore confidence in the Gore District Council”.

It follows a well-documented relationship breakdown between Mayor Ben Bell and CEO Steve Parry. As well as a request from some councillors for Bell to resign after they stated they had lost trust in him.

The mess needs to be fixed and this review has been identified as a way forward. But the problem is it’s the Gore ratepayers who are being asked to pick up the tab in already challenging economic times.

The terms of reference for that review weren’t adopted at Tuesday’s meeting as they instead wait for some legal advice.

It was the very next item on that meeting agenda which hammered home why ratepayers don’t deserve to be lumped with an unwanted and unbudgeted $130k bill right now.

An average 11.56% looms for the Gore District Council in the 2023-2024 annual plan.

Add in that expected unbudgeted $130,000 bill and it will push it over 12%.

At the same time as councillors are proposing the $130k review they were asking staff on Tuesday what could be cut to ensure the 11.56% rate increase could be softened.

One lever councillors have pulled was the delay of a new kerbside recycling service until 2024.

Only Mayor Ben Bell voted against that move saying he campaigned on bringing recycling back to the district by July 1.

One by one councillors expressed unease about the proposed rate rise at a time when households were already feeling the pinch.

Mataura Ward councillor Neville Phillips went as far as apologising to the people of Mataura.

“Mataura is going to be hit, once again, very hard and I’ve tried my best to keep it down as low as low as possible.

“[At] 11.56% I do apologise, but I've tried to do my best in a world that’s gone crazy really.”

Cr Paul McPhail was uncomfortable with the level of the rate rise but said the reality was they couldn’t just cut services.

“It’s a horrendous rate rise, and I don’t like it either, but it’s the world we are living in. If we go to the supermarket it’s the same. It’s a perfect storm we’ve hit… We’ve just got to face it.”

While different financial levers were looked at Cr Glenys Dickson shone a light on the glaringly obvious unwanted expense Gore has.

Dickson asked if $130k had already been factored into the rate rise. Corporate services general manager Lornae Straith confirmed it hadn’t.

Straith said at $130k it would be an additional 0.65% on rates and would take the overall average rise it to over 12%.

“We would need to find savings elsewhere to cover that if we wanted to keep the increase down,” Straith said.

Dickson said the $130k costing for the review seemed high.

“I know you have done an awful lot of work to keep it down but going out with a 11.6% [increase] is something I don’t feel very comfortable with, because I know that families are struggling and farmers are struggling at the moment.”

Council staff indicated the proposed increase was due to significant social and economic pressures worldwide that have had repercussions in New Zealand.

Some councillors, as well as Bell, asked if staff should try to find further savings to reduce the increase.

However, it was explained any further cost-cutting would result in the reduction of services and would in-turn trigger the need for public consultation.

Senior council staffer Rex Capil also said it would be “kicking the can down the road’’ and it was the Long-Term Plan process where those sorts of changes need to be looked at.

Higher staffing costs was one reason for the cost pressures. Straith said it was indicative of the tight employment market and the need to ensure appropriate staff numbers to meet levels of services.

Councillors approved the recruitment of an additional communications officer role given the ever-growing workload for the council’s communications general manager.

Deputy Mayor Keith Hovell spoke in favour of the additional resourcing.

“I would just like to say the level of communications both in and out of this building over the last couple of years has increased tremendously and it falls basically on the shoulders of one person or one staff member at present, so employing a further person in the role is essential.”

Few would argue that resourcing is not needed. Although it’s hard not to point to the obvious when assessing Hovell’s statement.

That increased workload has partly - or maybe even largely - been the result of the recent public attention shone on the council that has led to that likely $130k review.