fancy light-up toilets<\/a> show why we need to cap rates\u2026<\/p>\nPeri Zee<\/p>\n
There are absolutely cases where councils have done silly things, and central government seems to be responding to those isolated stories. But the evidence base for that is so scant. There\u2019s not that much evidence that rates capping is going to help us in terms of getting the outcomes that communities need.<\/p>\n
Sophie Barker<\/p>\n
We actually spend most of our money on super boring stuff that people don\u2019t see. It\u2019s the pipes under the ground, it\u2019s the wastewater treatment stations, and then we\u2019ve got things like we\u2019ve got to build a new landfill. And you know, maybe we can stop building toilets. But we do need to make our city attractive to live in. We need to have our libraries open for service, our swimming pools open, and they\u2019re not just a \u201cnice to have\u201d \u2013 they are part of our community infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Michael Ford\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I might just add that we invest really well in our basic infrastructure. I think pretty much all councils are doing so. But actually, a community is far more than just potholes, pipes and rubbish collection, and if you\u2019re looking for growth and economic development, which are words that the government are keen on, your city centres actually have to be reasonably attractive. You\u2019ve got to have a place where people want to live and want to set up business. That\u2019s not nice to have. So, yeah, I do get sick of the rhetoric about nice to haves. It\u2019s a load of nonsense.<\/p>\n
Peri Zee\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I would say overall, after working in local government for quite a long time all over the country, that local government overall is significantly more frugal and efficient than central government.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
Upper Hutt mayor Peri Zee is frustrated at the lack of evidence for some of the government\u2019s reforms.<\/p>\n
Fran Wilde\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We do things like wastewater and landfills. These are fundamental services that people need, and nobody would be labeling them as a \u2018nice to have\u2019 if it was coming from central government.<\/p>\n
On the rates cap grenade rolling down the road\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sophie Barker\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It feels like a bit of a grenade for future generations. If we have a rates cap and we cannot invest in landfills or city centre improvements, there is going to be horrible things happening for future generations. There was something on our news this morning about the number of young New Zealanders leaving the country. And that\u2019s what sort of strikes fear into my heart. If we\u2019re not building our cities as wonderful places for them to live, they do have other opportunities.<\/p>\n
Peri Zee<\/p>\n
If we can\u2019t get things on a sustainable track now, we\u2019re just passing on costs to future generations and making things more expensive for future generations. That\u2019s why I\u2019m here: to prevent that, because it\u2019s not fair. It\u2019s not going to be fair for our children if they get to that point where the landfills are full because we\u2019ve filled them up or underinvested in core maintenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fran Wilde\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The government needs to listen more to the evidence actually. We can all see what they want but the problem we\u2019ve got now is that the current councils, many of whom now have new leadership, are paying for some of the inactions of previous mayors and previous councils.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve watched Upper Hutt over the years and also where I live in South Wairarapa. We\u2019ve been paying rates here for nearly 25 years, and they were enormously low.<\/p>\n
Chris Luxon has accused councils of having poor financial literacy and wasting money. (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
Michael Ford\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other thing with the rates capping is they compare everything to CPI. Well, that\u2019s what households buy \u2013 lounge sets, sweets and butter and flour \u2013 whereas we buy pipes and bitumen and things like that. And they\u2019re quite different.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On underinvestment getting rewarded and prudence getting punished<\/p>\n
Peri Zee<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so perverse. For councils like mine, we\u2019ve got a lot of catching up to do. And I can\u2019t see a clear path out right now. There\u2019s infrastructure investment that we need to make, all of the maintenance that we need to do, and we can\u2019t within the cap the government is proposing. It\u2019s going to end up with a managed decline situation where we\u2019re just stemming the bleeding.<\/p>\n
Sophie Barker<\/p>\n
We did have a clear path to sustainability. We put it in our long term plan, and we bit the bullet last year when we had a 17.5% rates rise, and had a bigger rates rise this year as well.<\/p>\n
We did our 30 year infrastructure strategy, did all the right things, and now the clamps have come down, and that means the grenade is rolling down the road.<\/p>\n
On hope for the future, despite all of the above<\/p>\n
Sophie Barker\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think our pathway forward is partnership. We\u2019ve got a lot of really wonderful people in our city who want to make things happen, and even if the government clamps down on us, it\u2019s up to us to create our own future and work in partnership.<\/p>\n
Fran Wilde \u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019d add partnership with the government. I do truly think that if we can have a more partnership approach, we can actually solve some of these gnarly issues with much better outcomes,and probably more cost effectively too, which means one size doesn\u2019t fit all as we\u2019ve all said.<\/p>\n
Peri Zee\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For me, I would like to see local government band together and ask for bipartisanship in terms of central government\u2019s approach to local government because this flip-flopping is difficult.\u00a0 We should expect a bipartisan agreement on things like amalgamation, on rates\u2026<\/p>\n
Fran Wilde\u00a0<\/p>\n
*Laughs disconsolately*<\/p>\n
Peri Zee\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we have to because these things are too important to leave them to the incentives of political point scoring.<\/p>\n
Fran Wilde\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019re absolutely right, Peri, and there\u2019s a whole lot of other areas of our life that need that too. The health system would be a good example.<\/p>\n
Michael Ford\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was representing LGNZ to local government minister Simon Watts and we pushed for bipartisanship on a number of issues, particularly the RMA. And he said, \u201cI completely agree with you\u201d. And he mentioned examples of Chris Bishop and Kieran McAnulty working quite well together. So there are, there are some examples. I just don\u2019t think there\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n
Sophie Barker\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yeah, I think the word is kotahitanga, which is unity. I think that\u2019s a big word for Aotearoa, New Zealand, and that\u2019s the one that will hopefully take us forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"These mayors just won office for the first time. They\u2019re already worried they\u2019re going to end up lumping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[138949,42,14329,138950,43,138951,135,115543,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-234604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-fran-wilde","tag-headlines","tag-local-elections-2025","tag-michael-ford","tag-news","tag-peri-zee","tag-politics","tag-sophie-barker","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}