Federated Farmers Submission on Waitaki District Councils Draft Long Term Plan
1. The intentions and focus of the Long Term Plan - Federated Farmers congratulates Council for the quality of material provided through the LTP consultation process.
2. Rating impact and distribution of rating costs - Federated Farmers supports Council’s current financial position. We agree this puts the Council in a good position to assess what can be done to enable the District’s economic development and create a better quality of life for the District’s residents.
3. Levels of service and additional expenditure - We recommend Council develop an economic development strategy to define the role of the Council and key agreed economic development outcomes. Our member’s expectations around Council’s role in enabling growth in the district are broadly that:
- Council will ensure core responsibilities (roading infrastructure in particular) are being sufficiently addressed before moving onto the slightly more ‘nice to haves’;
- Council will work to ensure these areas of expenditure are appropriately funded in line with Council’s funding principles, while clearly distinguishing between public and private benefit;
- Expenditure will go towards fulfilling Council’s roles in respect of the key objectives the community have agreed are relevant to the District.
4. Federated Farmers supports Council’s preferred options in respect to the following proposals:
- Growing the Economy
- Rural road improvements
- Alps2Ocean cycle trail
- Narrow Rural Roads
- Web based services
- Rural Internet Access
- Council property sales
- Earthquake Prone Buildings
- Waitaki Biodiversity Fund
- Waitaki Biodiversity Activities
5. Rates allocations and Draft Revenue and Funding Policy - Federated Farmers largely supports Councils proposed funding principles. We believe there are two additional principles worth adopting in respect to rates affordability:
- Concerns around the affordability of rates will be addressed firstly by ensuring rates increases are kept to a minimum, and through efficient Council operations.
- Where there are concerns with the impacts of rates affordability on individual ratepayers, support to address these concerns will be targeted towards individuals, rather than through changes to funding policy.
6. While we largely support Council’s funding policies and its intelligent use of targeted rating tools, we disagree that the activities currently funded under the land value based general rate are appropriate or in alignment with Council’s policies. We recommend Council move to a capital value basis for the general rate, amalgamating this with the District Services Rate.
7. Development Contributions - Federated Farmers supports the ongoing use of development contributions, though there is some basis for Council to review the level of contributions