Draft Annual Plan 2023/24

Kia ora Waimakariri,

Welcome to the Draft Annual Plan for 2023-2024, the third year of our Long Term Plan (LTP).

We have navigated our way through some unprecedented times and challenges over the past few years.

Since adopting the LTP in 2021 we have traversed through Covid-19 and its aftermath. From a health perspective we fared well as a District, but unfortunately our community has not been immune to the economic and social challenges the pandemic brought.

We, like the rest of New Zealand and the world, have been affected by supply chain delays which greatly impacted the cost and availability of goods and services.

On top of this there have been compounding issues such as rising food and energy prices and increased inflation rates, caused in part by the war in Ukraine and the ongoing effects of Covid-19 on the global economy.

Simply, there’s been no economic period quite like this in the past 30 years.

During the pandemic we made it a priority to ensure rates were kept low. At the start of the pandemic, we had a low 1.5% increase and subsequent 4.5% increase.

In these instances we had some of the lowest increases in Canterbury, but unfortunately, we can’t keep rates artificially low forever without doing a disservice to our District’s future residents. It’s our top priority to always maintain the levels of service our community expects.

This year we had projected an increase in rates of 4.3% but as the rate of inflation increased it forced our hand and we’ve had to balance the economic realities with the expectations of the community.

We started with a proposed rates increase of 14.4% and have gone through our programme looking for savings and at what projects we can defer to keep increases as low as possible.

We had a goal of keeping rates increases under the inflation rate of 7.2% and the Local Government cost index which is consistently higher than the consumers price index (CPI).

We are pleased to report we have reviewed our programme extensively and managed to cap our proposed rates significantly lower than forecasted at an average of 5.97%.

Credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s, recently announced that Waimakariri District Council has retained its AA long-term and A-1+ short-term credit rating with a stable outlook.

The AA rating equates the Council with New Zealand’s national credit rating – the ‘sovereign rating’. Standard and Poor’s does not rate any individual Council higher than the sovereign rating.

Standard and Poor’s noted that the Council has strong financial management and budget flexibility. The consistency of Council’s financial performance, and how it is rated, assists significantly when it comes to future borrowing and rates that can’t otherwise be achieved.

Our staff have done an excellent job working through and finding the savings that mean our rates are much lower than inflation. As a consequence our Council will have one of the lower increases in New Zealand.

Importantly it also ensures any critical work isn’t put off for too long.

It is important to the Council to ensure affordability for residents, especially when we know households are under pressure due to the cost-of-living crisis.

Key issues

When looking ahead at the Draft Annual Plan for 2023-24 we have only put forward proposals needed to meet legislative requirements or current service levels.

There are three key challenges we face:

1. New regulations mean we need to test water supplies more regularly and bring forward planned upgrades

2. We have to make immediate improvements to the stormwater network following flooding from extreme weather events

3. Inflation and capped Waka Kotahi subsidies are disproportionately affecting our roading budget and more is needed to make sure local roads remain at a high standard.

Other issues

In Local Government there continues to be a lot of uncertainty with four central-government driven reform programmes underway – Three Waters, Resource Management Reforms, the Future for Local Government Review as well as Modernising the Emergency Management Framework.

There’s also new legislation aimed to meet the challenges we face due to a changing climate that will affect how the Council runs, as well as new urban planning rules which we are required to follow.

We’ve been playing an active role in these reforms and changes to ensure the Waimakariri voice is heard at a national level so we are best placed to continue to provide affordable services that our community expect from us.

Tell us what you think

Our aim is to make prudent, future-focused decisions, while still keeping the high level of service our residents expect from us.

We look forward to hearing from you. Please share your thoughts with us before 17 April 2023.

Ngā mihi,

Dan Gordon Mayor

Jeff Millward Acting Chief Executive