Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
- Councils want new financial tools to support them other than rates
- A poll suggests 58 of the public think doing so would make councils more effective, and just 8 percent think rates alone should support services used by tourists
- The government has shared no details on its city and regional deals
Councils, urging the government to give them more ways to fund themselves, are pointing to a poll suggesting the public supports accommodation and tourism levies.
They have set up a bed at this year's Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) conference in Wellington to bring attention to what they say is a need to "give rates a rest".
The government has proposed some new measures including GST sharing on new build houses, and new "city and regional deals".
LGNZ's President Sam Broughton, however, says they've seen little detail on those deals - and councils need support this year.
"The rating system's broken and we need new tools to be able to fund local government infrastructure and services to people," he said.
"It needs to happen now, this year, before we get to next year. Councils have been through their accounts line by line to try and make savings and we've still seen a lift in rates this year at unprecedented levels like we haven't seen before. That's due in part just to the cost of insurance being up 70 percent, roads and wastewater systems up 30 percent.
"At the moment the only funding tool that council has is rates."
As it stood, the rates paid by each ratepayer was supporting the infrastructure and services for 51 international tourists, Broughton said.
"In Mackenzie, their rates have had to go up this year by 1 percent just to clean the public toilets twice a day. We think that's a really unsustainable way to fund infrastructure."
Councils had raised the possibility of tourist levies or a bed tax with the government, and Tourism Minister Matt Doocey was interested in how it could be applied, he said.
But it did not appear to be a priority for Local Government Minister Simeon Brown.
"There's no legislation for that, so councils can't do that," Brown said, when asked about tourist levies and bed taxes.
"What I'm focused on at the moment is around having a regional deal framework which is allowing a much longer-term relationship between local and central government so that we can have that longer-term pipeline of infrastructure.
"The key thing at the moment I'm focused on is having a framework for regional deals."
Broughton said LGNZ had heard few details on what the government's promised city and regional deals would look like, and councils had proposed other financing tools like mineral royalties and extraction.
They welcomed the government's moves towards congestion charging, he said, but he wanted local govenrment involved in those conversations.
The polls
One poll showed a majority of people thought councils would be more effective if they had such tools.
Respondents were asked between 5 and 7 May: "If your council did the following, would it make them much more effective, less effective, or make no change to their effectiveness: Used a wider range of funding tools other than general rates."
A majority of 58 percent said it would be more effective, compared with 11 percent who said less effective, 14 percent who thought it would have no effect, and 17 percent who were unsure.
Another question between 1 and 5 August found strong support for tourist fees and charges, asking: "How should the local infrastructure and services that tourists use should be paid for?"
Only 8 percent said rates should pay for the lot, with 34 percent saying tourist fees and charges should be used instead, and 45 percent wanting a combination of the two. Another 13 percent were unsure.
Both polls were by Curia, and questioned 1000 people as part of wider surveys for a range of clients, with a margin of error of +/-3.1 percent at the 95 percent confidence interval, with results weighted for age, gender and location to reflect the voting adult population.