Last week the Hon Dr. Nick Smith gave his annual speech to the Nelson Rotary Club.
Dr. Smith is, of course, the Minister for Local Government and some of the figures he quoted were extremely interesting and some were simply alarming.
The 78 councils in New Zealand are responsible for $100 billion worth of public assets, employ 23,000 people, spend $7.5 billion of public money each year and every day make thousands of regulatory decisions that impact on the lives of all New Zealanders.
Interesting stuff.
But alarmingly, over the last decade average rates across the country have risen by 6.8% per annum – more than twice the rate of inflation. Rates have gone up more than any other component of the consumer price index. Equally alarming is the fact that council debt has quadrupled over the same period.
These are really concerning figures and yet the local press shows no interest in taking up the issue. Why don’t we see articles that include these figures? Why don’t we see articles that show how our local councils have performed over the last decade against each other and against the national average? Surely at a time when our councils are considering a study on the future economic performance of the Bay, this sort of information would be of interest to readers.
Frankly as a city councilor I don’t know the figures and I would like to.
It is interesting to note that whilst rates have risen 6.8% per annum over the last decade, over the previous decade the increase was only 3.9%. Clearly after the loony leftie Local Body Minister Sandra Lee, dumped a whole lot more duties and responsibilities on councils in 2002, costs began to escalate. That would suggest to me that whilst some councils became more efficient and absorbed many of the additional costs, others increased their indebtedness and have increased rates to service the debt.
I challenge the local press to seek the relevant information from the various councils and to publish an article showing how they have performed over the last decade in terms of rates and debt against each other and the national figures supplied by Dr. Smith.
I for one would be interested in seeing the figures,
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