Decisions on transport referendum, development contributions and capping rates Auckland Council’s Governing Body today made a number of decisions related to the development of its 10-year budget, known as the Long-term Plan 2015-25. Key decisions included: No referendum on transport investment and funding option at this stage The Governing Body voted 12 votes to 9 not to undertake a referendum to seek feedback from Auckland electors on transport investment and funding options at this stage. Aucklanders will still have the opportunity to have their say on the transport investment and funding options during public consultation on council’s 10-year budget from 23 January to 16 March. It was also agreed council would undertake an independent, statistically reliable survey to help inform decisions about transport funding, and that all feedback received relating to transport options and funding is analysed by an independent party. A possible referendum to be held at a later date once further information is available was discussed. No further rates transition policy The Governing Body agreed 11 votes to 10 to have no further rates transition, meaning similar value properties will now pay the same rates. The decision means there will be no further capping on rates increases or decreases. No capping of rates means that all ratepayers who own similar value properties would pay the same rates no matter where in Auckland they live. As a consequence of amalgamation council agreed in the previous LTP 2012-2022 to cap rates increases at 10 per cent for Auckland households for three years. This was funded by limiting decreases. The legislation that enables this has now expired. The cap was put in place to limit what would have been large increases for some people as council transitioned from eight inherited rating policies to one. However this meant some ratepayers were paying more rates than others with the same value property. The decision will be included in the Long-term Plan consultation document along with the other options that were considered by councillors. Changes to development contributions The Governing Body adopted changes to the development contributions policy which will go out for public consultation in early 2015. Development contributions are the fees charged by council when development takes place. The fees are collected to fund the community and network infrastructure such as stormwater, transport and reserves the council has planned to provide for development projects. The proposed policy adopted includes a number of changes to how development contributions are currently collected. The key changes proposed include: · Setting residential development charges based on house size as well as the type of development (currently it is based only on the type of development). This is because a larger house generally equates to more people, and it is the number of people that results in the need for more infrastructure investment. · Increasing the number of funding areas for stormwater and transport to more accurately allocate the costs of additional infrastructure to developments in the areas where that investment is required. · Charging Kaumatua housing the same as retirement units. Council’s policy on development contributions also sets out the capital projects the council will fund from development contributions for each type of activity (e.g. transport, stormwater) and how much the cost of providing each of these activities will be in different geographic funding areas. Development contributions are charged for all residential developments, from a new house to a large apartment block, as well as non-residential developments, subdivisions, and for some changes of land use.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 05:05:49 +0000
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