The Mayor's letter of 15/3/06 to all ratepayers tried to explain why there was going to be one year with a ”huge” rates increase. The letter even said that: -
'…the year ending June 2007 there is a significant increase. After that, over the following nine years, the increase is more modest.”
There are a lot of blogs on Sunlive which I have been following with great interest, it includes: -
The next 10 years of rate increases (actual in brackets) are: 2007 16.40%,
2008 4.55%(14.6%), 2009 3.57% (10.90%), 2010 3.53%(12.8%), 2011 4.79% (12.0%), 2012 -0.08% (11.0%+), 2013 2.40%, 2014 3.93%, 2015 2.55%, 2016 2.20%.
On 17/9/10 the Mayor said (the day voting papers arrived, no other Councillor seemed to know about it) that a rate rise of 17.8% +5% contingency is 'unsustainable' and TCC staff would report on this in December-2010, maybe a 6-8% increase only? The only thing Council appear to have done is NOT MAKE debt repayments by about $6 million or so, all that does is make a bigger problem 'go away” until next year, that has not solved anything nor changed anything at all.
The rate increases planned for 10 years all happened in the first three years?
We should actually be looking at a rate decrease in 2012 according to the Mayors 15/3/06 letter, since then interest rates have dropped significantly by almost 50%, Council's single biggest cost annually, what's gone so wrong?
A Barnes, Tauranga.