Kei a koe te anamata/Nōu te ao |Our future starts with you

On this page you will find an overview of the issues and what we are consulting on in the 2024-2034 Draft Long Term Plan. The Long Term Plan pulls together all of our expected activities, major projects, income and costs, and forecasts rates over the next 10 years.

In the previous Long Term Plan, our council had a strong focus on supporting growth activity – investing in infrastructure for residential housing, and industrial and commercial development, to provide for growth and generate better outcomes for the community.

A lot has been achieved, but post-Covid and Cyclone Gabrielle, the economic environment is now very different and unpredictable, and it is important to carefully consider how we move forward with new projects to enable growth, as well as support business as usual given the financial risks. 

Our plan is to tackle the impacts from the cyclone head on, to address the immediate needs of the recovery through the introduction of a new targeted rate to fund that work. At the same time, this plan keeps debt within our borrowing limit, but there’s no doubt it’s a real challenge, and servicing the debt will have a significant impact on rates.

Through this planning process we are asking you to consider our preferred options for some of the big-ticket items and how we’ll pay for them. We also want to hear what you think about where we have identified we could take a pause to save some money.

Whether you agree or disagree, or have different suggestions, please let us know. We look forward to your feedback.

Submissions close at 5pm Monday 27 May, 2024.

Our rates are shared out across a huge range of projects and facilities. To help people understand where the money goes, this graphic shows how each $1000 of rates is averaged out.