Wellington Mayor Andy Foster says a proposed rates hike will be enough to cover the $2.7 billion needed to be spent in the next decade on the city's crumbling water pipes.
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster. Photo: RNZ /Dom Thomas
The council will discuss the rates rise next week, with 14 percent, 17 percent or 23 percent hikes on the table.
Foster said action must be taken now the scale of the problem was known but he was trying to keep any rates rises as low as possible.
"this isn't just Wellington City, this is an issue up and down the country" - Wellington Mayor Andy Foster
He said the hike might not be as high as the 23 percent increase that made headlines in November, but property owners should still expect a stiff increase in their rates bill.
While Foster had campaigned on reducing Wellington's forecast rates rises, he said things had changed since he was elected.
"I'm always trying to keep rates as low as I can reasonably, but we've had two major things that have happened since then, at least.
"Well one of them obviously is water, just got elected and the water pipes started breaking, and our community and media have been calling out for investment in it and that is what we're going to do."
The Covid-19 pandemic had also had a big effect on the council's budget as well, he said.
Formerly a city councillor for two decades, Foster denied being aware of a problem with Wellington's water pipes during that time.
"I did look back when water pipes started breaking and people were saying 'what did you know'. And the reality is, I don't think we had a single paper on water pipes highlighting a problem with them in nine years."
He said the council had invested significantly in infrastructure, and councillors had been "honest with what they knew" and similar problems were evident around New Zealand.
"Of course this isn't just Wellington City, this is an issue up and down the country. Ours have obviously gained greater prominence than both but there is an infrastructure deficit, everybody's recognising that," he said.
Council was also considering cutting some services and deferring various projects to help keep the rates rise down.
"There are some deferrals we're incorporating into the budget, things like for example the Bond Store, which is where the Wellington Museum is, and strengthening that, the opera house, there's a significant number of smaller renewal projects that we're looking to defer as well, those kinds of things."
Foster said he had chaired a mayoral task force last year which concluded that the money collected for depreciation of water assets needed to be spent on renewal of assets.
"We effectively need to ring-fence the money which is collected for depreciation of our water assets to go back into the water assets in terms of renewing those pipes so that they're not continually ageing," he said.
He also expected government reform of the water system would help fix the problem.
"Of course in three years time we're expecting that there's going to be a new water structure, which will be a national water structure,"