As part of our preparation for the Long Term Plan 2021-31 (LTP) we asked what your thoughts were on Council’s approach to rates increases and managing debt, we received a total of 105 submissions.

We asked submitters if they agreed with our preferred option of annual rates increases of around 4%, 59 people agreed. We had 46 people (including 15 people that responded ‘Yes’ to the first question) disagree with option one and indicated their preference of the three subsequent options provided. Five people said Lower rates now, bigger increases later, 44 people said Stick to inflation and 14 people said Inflation + 4%. What this tells Council is that a majority of the submitters would like Council to keep rates low

We also asked submitters if they preferred Council maintain our reserves (a conservative approach) or borrow externally, and spend some of the reserves. 76 people responded that they would like Council to stick to a conservative approach and maintain our reserves. 27 people preferred we did something different and borrowed externally and spent some of the reserves on community projects.

All of this information has been passed onto Council and will be used to help shape our Financial Strategy for the next 10 years.

See a full summary of the results here

Watch this space – we’ll be consulting on our Financial Strategy and the rest of the Long Term Plan 2021-31 in March/April 2021.