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Fixing the plumbing takes centre stage in draft 10-year budget

Local News Our Work
PUBLISHED: 23 DEC 2020

Councillors hammered out our draft 10-year budget, worth about $3 billion, at a marathon 7.5-hour meeting on Tuesday. They decided what was in and what was out in a raft of proposed multi-million dollar work programmes that fell into four main focus areas:

  • Fixing the Plumbing,
  • Tightening Our Belts,
  • Planting our Place, and
  • Paying it Forward for our kids. 

Looming large was a fix for the backlog of work on the District’s ageing water networks, and they settled for an investment of $248m over the next decade. Other big-ticket projects included transport upgrades (about $153m over 10 years), extending the Coastal Walkway to Waitara (about $26m in years 1-6) and a multi-purpose hub development (about $40m in years 4-10). 

If the draft budget is approved it will mean an approximate total rates increase of about 12% and an average rise of 6.7% over the following 9 years. That works out to an increase of about 9.7% or $231 for the average urban household for the next financial year. But it’s not set in stone and we’ll want you to have your say on this draft over the summer and when we hit the streets in March, before the budget is finalised next June. Click here to read the full 965 page agenda report councillors considered.