A former city councillor with an eye for the Tauranga City's finances is calling for council to undertake a comprehensive city funding review.

'Critical assumptions and assertions in this budget are demonstrably false,” says John Robson.

'For instance, debt is not a funded mechanism it's a financing mechanism, there is a difference. And the city, contrary to the dominant narrative in this town, is not booming.”

If the wealth of Tauranga's citizens is measured on the basis of gross domestic product per head of population, GDP per capita, the city is not booming, he told Tauranga City councillors at the recent Annual Plan hearings.

'Over the last ten years GDP per capita in Tauranga was half the national average. Last year the GDP per capita in Tauranga actually fell.”

John says at one stage Priority One had a metric including GDP per capita. But somehow along the line, due to repeated failure to make any impact, they dropped that metric.

'But like Trump, I suppose if you don't like what it's telling you, you get rid of it.”

He says the Annual Plan, which he was submitting on, is not a plan – it's a budget in which too many numbers are hopelessly optimistic.

'Tauranga City Council will not deliver the budgeted capital works programme. Both Standard and Poors (Standard & Poor's is the world's leading index provider and the foremost source of independent credit ratings.) and I are in agreement on this. They discount your proposed capital expenditure by 20 per cent.

'The budget also lacks transparency. Progress made last triennium and positively commented on by Standard and Poors, has disappeared.

'And the accompanying so called detailed budget is nothing of the sort. It is a ledger which obfuscates rather than illuminates. I know for personal experience councillors cannot find their way around that detailed budget.

'All of which means the legitimacy of your decisions can be questioned. Certainly there can be no informed consent – and we all know what lack of informed consent means for the people of Tauranga.”

Tauranga City's growth is creating wealth, says John, 'but as is so often the case in New Zealand we are privatising the benefit and socialising the costs”.

Despite the Christian thread that runs throughout much of the community the city is choosing a rating policy that punishes the poor, says John

'There is a dividend that arises from Tauranga's growth. You have it in you power to reinvest it in the city of Tauranga for the benefit of all the people who live here.

'I would urge you to seriously consider a comprehensive city funding review with a focus on fairness, equity, sustainability - and perhaps more than anything else, integrity.”

John wants the city council to put his rates up – by about 60 per cent.

'Thanks to growth some of us are doing very well here in Tauranga, making significant untaxed capital gains while the city is strapped for cash. The rateable value of the land in Tauranga six years ago was 14 billion dollars, this is the land value of our city, circa 14 billion.

'Currently it's around 17 billion dollars. The land owners of Tauranga are some three billion dollars better off than they were, while the council is struggling to fund two critical components of a successful city, one internal and one external. Internally your systems are self-evidently still not fit for purpose – and neither is the city's infrastructure.

'If ten per cent of the land value appreciation had been captured by council, as it is in so many other cities in the world, imagine the possibilities.”

John also wants the city council to initiate a comprehensive city funding review, in which issues such as fairness could be addressed. He describes Tauranga's rating system as repressive because it punishes those with less.

'We need to move I believe to a process a rating process a funding process where those who benefit, pay. It doesn't seem unreasonable.”

This could include placing a differential on commercial rates, or taxing upward which is another common practice around the work – and John says is within the scope of the Rating Powers Act.

If the city's financing was more realistic perhaps the council would be able to reverse the ratepayer funding of the Te Tumu fiasco, he adds.

Tauranga City and Western Bay of plenty District councils paid $15 million for a 170ha plot owned by Paul Adams in 2007, to prevent the developer building a rural subdivision in the middle of land set aside for the Te Tumu urban development.

The land is unable to be sold until 2026 with the vendors getting the first refusal.

By the end of the 2013/14 financial year the city's share of the debt was $14 million, expected to rise to $15.9 million by the end of the 2014 year with interest expected to be $1 million.

January 2013 city councillors decided ratepayers will contribute $1.4 million to the Te Tumu land in order to keep the interest in sight and pay off four per cent of the principal.

Councillor Larry Baldock spoke against it at the time, saying the then low land values at Te Tumu were temporary and when rezoned from rural to residential, the land value will rise to the point the council will realise a good return on its investment.

'After all the people of Tauranga were promised that financing Paul Adams would not cost the ratepayer anything - from the then chief executive. Which is somewhat at odds with the multi-million dollar bill they have paid to date,” says John.

There were few questions. Councillor Larry Baldock says they are all 'alternate facts” and asked if John could produce a paper showing how different rating schemes are possible under the Rating Powers Act.

Councillor Rick Curach asked how such a regime would work when more recently it is the lower value properties showing the sharpest increase in value.

'My personal view is it should be done on a percentage basis,” says John. 'The people at the higher end of the market I reckon should pay more. We have people in this city who are making more than the average household earns in land value appreciation per year.

'Meanwhile we have people in this city who can't afford to house or feed themselves.”

Tauranga is the only city that doesn't have a rating differential on commercial property says John. A lack that costs the city $10-15 million every year.

'That $10-15 million a year at current funding rates would provide for a museum amongst other things,” says John.

'So if we are going to bench mark let's do it fully, properly that's why I'm calling for a comprehensive city funding review, not a piecemeal city rates review.”