One would wonder why the rate increases in Tauranga City and Western BOP District Council are so disparate over the last three years? The following figures include inflation even though each council has used a different inflation rate in calculating the annual rate increase.

Tga City WBOPDC
08/09 7.3% 5.04%
09/10 12.0% 4.1%
10/11 9.9% 4.2%

These increases are for the General Rate only and include the Uniform Annual General Charge.
Tauranga councillors will use the hoary old argument that it is Tauranga's unprecedented growth and can therefore be blamed on previous councils.
Study your own documents councillors and you will find averaged over the last three annual budgets, Tauranga's growth has been 3.8%. That amount of extra properties does not create the demand for the unsustainable level of annual rate increases that have been seen in Tauranga City over recent years.
Neither is ‘catchup' an excuse, because Western BOP Plenty Council, Tauranga's neighbour has seen proportionately the same amount of growth over the halcyon years.
Maureen J Anderson, Pyes Pa.