This letter is a plea to the residents of the Western Bay of Plenty District Council area to submit to the Regional Council's 10 year plan with regard to rate increases in our area. Your Regional Council rates will go up by an average of 28% on your next rate bill, this will be higher for residential areas due to the fact that your land values have not dropped as much as most other sectors. We are currently paying the highest amount of general rates in the whole of the Regional Council's area and you will now pay even more. The percentage increase of 28% is the highest of all councils, with the next highest being Tauranga at 18%.
The next travesty of justice is where the money is spent. It is not in the Western Bay area. Much of this money is going to subsidise passenger transport in Tauranga and Rotorua, Rotorua air quality and Rotorua Lakes. The council states in their Backyard publication under changing our funding approach 'first is the proposal to increase the proportion of income we receive from general rates, instead of collecting it from targeted rates. This will help better reflect the regional benefit of some of the work we do.” This is bureaucratic speak for general rates subsidising the people outside our region because there is little regional benefit happening in our area. Already a huge amount of general rates plus port income is spent outside our area.
We have beautiful harbours, rivers and bush in our area and yet very little is being spent to improve these major assets which are in desperate need of attention, again I quote from Backyards taking the lead on Tauranga Harbour it states 'However meeting the goal of the new programme is achieved with a relatively small cost increase.” As can be seen from the Regional Council's plan the increase in rates is to benefit other areas. I urge all rate payers to submit to the Regional Council's 10 year plan urging the Regional Council to fairly spend the extra general rate revenue they plan to collect and not for us to subsidise other programmes outside our area. Submissions close on 27 April.

Mike Williams, Katikati.