A law change threatening to cost Tauranga ratepayers an additional $17.5 million and stall the city's development for a couple of years, is being fought by Tauranga City Council.

Mayor Stuart Crosby will be presenting the council's objections to the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill at the Select Committee hearings in Auckland next week – along with developers and other growth area councils including Thames Coromandel and Auckland.

While the Bill as it stands will cost city ratepayers $17.5 million, it will cost Aucklanders hundreds of millions of dollars, says Stuart.

'The real issue is this is not going to make any difference to housing affordability whatsoever.

'In my view it's politics without substance. It's there to give the perception that the Government is doing something about affordable housing – which we all support. But this particular action could actually be counter-productive, because if it goes through we will have to reassess our whole development contribution policy.”

The city development contributions policy is the rule book that sorts how the major infrastructure costs are shared out and paid for.

Tauranga's development contributions policy comes out of a year-long process of workshops and discussions with the developer community.

'We have developed a long standing relationship with our development community and a very transparent and robust development contributions policy,” says Stuart.

'So they are supporting us 100 per cent.”

Nobody wants a stoppage in the development process when the development cycle is beginning to emerge from the after effects of the global financial crisis, and the city cannot sustain any more debt, says Stuart.

'I hope common sense prevails, but when politics are involved, you can't always guarantee that.”

The bill itself is about restricting the use of development contributions not stopping them altogether, says Stuart.

The two areas of major concern are the lack of sunset clause in the policy, meaning projects already built that are being paid for over several years of development contributions will have the funding cut, and the residual debt falls back on ratepayers.

The second issue is the proposed appeals process.

'I'm personally not opposed to an appeal process per se, but the risk of this particular appeal process will be uncertainty,” says Stuart.

'Both the council and the development community need certainty. A number of these projects go over a long period of time.

'There's a lot that we do support; the concept of dee cees, that they should be used for essential infrastructure, they should not be used for non-essential infrastructure – and that's a debate, what that means in the community.

'We do support a lot in the bill, but those two elements, not having a sunset clause for existing collection and the type of appeal process they are providing is going to create enormous uncertainty.”