Toby Adams: Hauraki District Mayor on the need for more ways to raise revenue for councils

Councils are putting a range of ideas on the table to raise revenue, as they push back against the idea of a cap on rates rises. 

Rates shot up by an average of 15% this year. 

Local Government New Zealand is proposing a range of options from civil defence levies to accommodation levies. 

Hauraki District Mayor Toby Adams told Ryan Bridge some of the options, like congestion charging, won't work for their district. 

He says that's why a vast range of solutions is important. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The average rates shot up fifteen percent this year. Councils
are struggling to pay for infrastructure, they're struggling to pay
for services, et cetera. So Local Government New Zealand's come
up with a list of twenty five financing tools to
try and help reduce the pressure on ratepayers to fund
local councils. A lot of them we heard of before,
you know, the GST sharing on new builds, congestion charging etc.

(00:22):
We're joined this morning by the Hodaki District mayor Toby Adams,
who's with me. Toby, good morning, Good morning, Ryan, you
very well, thank you. Obviously everyone knows the problem. I
think local councils don't have enough money and you don't
have enough ways of getting it. Which of these twenty
five would suit a council like yours? Which would you? Because

(00:43):
I don't think congestion charging will be up youre ally
would it?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Congesting charging wouldn't work. And that's what it is, twenty
five different ones because you know, in local government not
one size fits all obviously, so you've got to have
a vast range of different ones. But a GST share
would work in our council. A little bit of a
share of royalties. We've got a large mine in our district,
so if we had a share of royalties, they'll make
a huge difference in the amount of infrastructure that we

(01:08):
could get done with just a little bit of extra
out without having to put rates up in amounts.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah, I was going to ask about the mining WORYLTI
is given your location. Is the government open to that?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Lots of government say that they're open to it, but
I mean this has been gon for a long time.
We've never really had the conversation and they've said, you
know what, well, we'll definitely do it.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Can you explain to me why is it so expensive
for councils to get stuff done? You know? And why
do we never have enough infrastructure? Is it literally because
the costs go up and you cannot charge the rate
payers we don't have enough people to fund it.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, I mean we've got You always have a small
base and rates is your only real tool to collect revenue.
You're always mindful of not putting the rates up too
high for various reasons, and a lot of it's not
normally political. It's just about hearing from your community that
they can't ford shute rate rises and infrastructure just costs
an absolute fortune at the moment. Like for our small council,

(02:08):
the powerball went up six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That's just to keep the lights going in your main
streets and your pumps running. So that's an increase of
sixty six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so totally over
a year. It's now two million dollars a.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Year just for the power and that jumped six fifteen
one year, yep, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
So those are the kind of cost councils we're facing
in this last sort of economic crisis that we're in
and that's why rates went up so much.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Toby, thanks for your time. Toby Adams, the Hodaki District mayor.
They've got a conference going on and local government New
Zealand calling for more levers to pull to get cash
in the door for councils.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
to News Talks.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
It'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.