Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Toby Adams: Hauraki District Mayor on the need for more ways to raise revenue for councils

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Toby Adams: Hauraki District Mayor on the need for more ways to raise revenue for councils · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The average rates shot up fifteen percent this year. Councils
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: are struggling to pay for infrastructure, they're struggling to pay
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: for services, et cetera. So Local Government New Zealand's come
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: up with a list of twenty five financing tools to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: try and help reduce the pressure on ratepayers to fund
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: local councils. A lot of them we heard of before,
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  Speaker 1: you know, the GST sharing on new builds, congestion charging etc.
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  Speaker 1: We're joined this morning by the Hodaki District mayor Toby Adams,
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  Speaker 1: who's with me. Toby, good morning, Good morning, Ryan, you
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  Speaker 1: very well, thank you. Obviously everyone knows the problem. I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: think local councils don't have enough money and you don't
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  Speaker 1: have enough ways of getting it. Which of these twenty
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  Speaker 1: five would suit a council like yours? Which would you? Because
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  Speaker 1: I don't think congestion charging will be up youre ally
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  Speaker 1: would it?
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  Speaker 2: Congesting charging wouldn't work. And that's what it is, twenty
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  Speaker 2: five different ones because you know, in local government not
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  Speaker 2: one size fits all obviously, so you've got to have
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  Speaker 2: a vast range of different ones. But a GST share
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  Speaker 2: would work in our council. A little bit of a
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: share of royalties. We've got a large mine in our district,
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  Speaker 2: so if we had a share of royalties, they'll make
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  Speaker 2: a huge difference in the amount of infrastructure that we
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  Speaker 2: could get done with just a little bit of extra
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  Speaker 2: out without having to put rates up in amounts.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask about the mining WORYLTI
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  Speaker 1: is given your location. Is the government open to that?
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  Speaker 2: Lots of government say that they're open to it, but
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  Speaker 2: I mean this has been gon for a long time.
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  Speaker 2: We've never really had the conversation and they've said, you
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  Speaker 2: know what, well, we'll definitely do it.
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  Speaker 1: Can you explain to me why is it so expensive
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  Speaker 1: for councils to get stuff done? You know? And why
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  Speaker 1: do we never have enough infrastructure? Is it literally because
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  Speaker 1: the costs go up and you cannot charge the rate
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  Speaker 1: payers we don't have enough people to fund it.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we've got You always have a small
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  Speaker 2: base and rates is your only real tool to collect revenue.
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  Speaker 2: You're always mindful of not putting the rates up too
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  Speaker 2: high for various reasons, and a lot of it's not
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  Speaker 2: normally political. It's just about hearing from your community that
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: they can't ford shute rate rises and infrastructure just costs
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: an absolute fortune at the moment. Like for our small council,
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  Speaker 2: the powerball went up six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
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  Speaker 2: That's just to keep the lights going in your main
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  Speaker 2: streets and your pumps running. So that's an increase of
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  Speaker 2: sixty six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so totally over
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  Speaker 2: a year. It's now two million dollars a.
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  Speaker 1: Year just for the power and that jumped six fifteen
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  Speaker 1: one year, yep, one hundred percent.
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  Speaker 2: So those are the kind of cost councils we're facing
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  Speaker 2: in this last sort of economic crisis that we're in
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  Speaker 2: and that's why rates went up so much.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Toby, thanks for your time. Toby Adams, the Hodaki District mayor.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: They've got a conference going on and local government New
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  Speaker 1: Zealand calling for more levers to pull to get cash
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  Speaker 1: in the door for councils.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: to News Talks.
• 2:51
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• 2:54
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