Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau says Tuesday's meeting will not see any more major cuts to projects in an attempt to find savings. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau is optimistic the council will easily finalise its long-term plan the final meeting of the year before the summer break.
Wellington City Council has been under the watchful eye of a Crown observer for the past month, a move triggered by councillors voting in October not to sell the council's 34 percent stake in Wellington Airport after all, throwing the long-term plan back into debate.
The council had a six-hour meeting in late November, cutting projects and pulling back funding to rebalance the budget.
The council will on Tuesday lock in changes before the plan goes out for public consultation in March/April 2025. Councillors will make final decisions once community feedback has been considered, the plan will then be audited, and take affect by July 2025.
Whanau told RNZ this meeting would not see any more major cuts to projects in an attempt to find savings.
Funding had been taken from projects like cycleways, bus priority lanes and upgrades for facilities at Ōtari-Wiltons Bush, which added up to savings of $558 million.
Last meeting, councillor Tony Randle tried to push through an amendment to cut back the Golden Mile project - one which Whanau was determined would not be cut - but his proposal failed to get over the line.
Randle accused fellow councillors of being unable to make a hard decision, and councillor Ray Chung told RNZ on Monday it was no use tinkering with smaller projects, saying they needed to be cutting bigger ones for real savings.
Whanau said while she was expecting more amendments to be brought by councillors at today's meeting, she was confident they would reach a consensus.
"We often debate quite heavily in our meetings, and I'm sure [this meeting] will be the same," she said.
"We've got a package ready, we just need to finalise it and put it out to consultation. But I think on the whole, I don't think we'll receive much difficulty at all."
She said Crown observer Lindsay McKenzie had been good for the process, with councillors meeting more often and working better collectively.
Rates and parking fees
Rates and parking are also on the agenda for the final meeting. Current draft figures showed a projected rates increase for 2025/26 of 15.9 percent, but Whanau said council officers were working on ways to reduce that.
She said it was common for this number to start high, and then for the council to work through different levers such as offsetting, insurance and borrowing to bring it down.
Officers would be coming back to councillors in February with options to offset some of it.
"I'm confident and I've made it very clear that it needs to come back to the 12.8 percent region," Whanau said.
A parking fee proposal first rejected in May was also back on the table, set to increase fees to between $2 and $5 in nine suburbs -
Johnsonville, Miramar, Rongotai, Khandallah, Island Bay, Newlands, Tawa, Newtown and Kilbirnie - which would earn the council between $581,000 and $1.73m a year.
Submitting on the Treaty Principles Bill
Councillors would also be voting on whether the make a submission as a council on the government's Treaty Principles Bill.
Councillor Chung came out in opposition of making a submission on Monday, calling it a distraction from their long term plan work, and saying it was pointless, as National said it would not support the bill past its first reading anyway.
Whanau said being the first Māori mayor of the city, she said it was important to have a say.
"It's all good and well for people to say 'It's going to fail anyway, we shouldn't have our say,' but that isn't democracy. We need to make it really clear to the government that we don't approve of this bill so that they don't try it again."
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