Buller mayor Jamie Cleine says cutting 'nice to haves' will hurt the community. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Dumping the 'nice to haves' from council budgets could mean cutting things that keep a community together in hard times, Buller mayor Jamie Cleine is warning.
The Government has urged councils to stop spending on non-essential projects, and stick to the basic services such as water and rubbish removal.
Cleine says the austerity measures needed to keep rates in single digits would make the coming Long-Term Plan process very painful.
"We'll have to decide what to cut, but some things that are 'nice to have' are pretty important to our people, like elderly housing, parks and sports grounds, arts funding - they're the sort of life blood of small communities."
Slashing them was also unlikely to yield significant savings, Cleine said.
"You can cut all the things communities actually get a lot of value out of, like grants, that would save $70,000 - but it's going to make almost no difference to our bottom line."
It also paled into insignificance compared to the mammoth wall of investment the council was facing for infrastructure in the near future, he said.
"If you cobble all those small things together it virtually kills off our volunteers and a heap of community projects, but you're doing that while you've got an $80 million dollar problem over here. It's insignificant."
To encourage council to "do the basics brilliantly" the Government was abolishing the Four Well-beings in the Local Government Act, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told councils last month.
The clauses, reinstated by the Labour Minister Nanaia Mahuta in 2018, mandated councils to promote the social, cultural and environmental well-being of their communities, as well as their economic health.
The amended Act would not prevent councils from spending on the nice-to-haves, but it would be a much harder sell to keep them in the budget, the Buller mayor said.
"I mean it's very clear from the Government rhetoric, that if it's not rubbish, potholes or water, then we shouldn't be doing it. And if the community and the council decide that's what we have to do, all of that stuff is on the block."
Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Finance Minister Nicola Willis has warned that councils who impose double-digit rate rises this year could be punished next year at the ballot box.
"If you don't like your rates bill, make sure you vote," she advised listeners.
"Our voter turnout rates at local elections are pretty low. If you're not happy have a look at who your councillors are, what their track records are, whether they stand up for the things you believe in."
But decades of voting for candidates who promise to keep the rates down was a major reason for the current infrastructure crisis, Cleine said.
"A lot of councils didn't invest in these basics when they should have because of the impact on rates, but low rates are incompatible with the infrastructure and services that communities actually need and want. "
And pointing the finger at councils, while demanding they now spend multi-millions on infrastructure, was unfair, Cleine said.
Buller District Council had already pruned 15 percent off a potential 30 percent rate rise this time by deferring or scaling back infrastructure projects, to come up with a rate increase of 14 per cent.
"The heat that's being turned up in the community off the back of some of the government rhetoric is going to make our job really difficult. It's hard to see how it won't be a really austere LTP process to avoid double-digit rate rises," Cleine said.
- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.