02/09/2026
ARBITRARY RATES CAPPING: WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN FOR TAIRĀWHITI?
On the surface, rates capping sounds great.
And before you come at me I am also a rate payer, nobody wants their rates to keep going up. I certainly don’t. Our whānau are already dealing with the rising cost of food, power, insurance, mortgages and rent. Every extra dollar matters.
But here’s the problem.
Putting an arbitrary cap on rates doesn’t put a cap on the cost of running our region.
It doesn’t make fixing our roads cheaper.
It doesn’t make our ageing pipes and infrastructure suddenly last longer.
It doesn’t stop the rain falling, our rivers flooding, slips closing roads or debris from taking out priority infrastructure.
It doesn’t reduce the cost of drainage, flood protection, civil defence, biosecurity or preparing our communities for climate change.
And it doesn’t stop Central Government passing new legislation and regulations that councils are required to implement and not providing the money to do it.
Those are called unfunded mandates.
Government tells councils what they have to do, but ratepayers are left to pick up the bill.
That’s the part of the rates-capping conversation I don’t think is getting enough attention.
Here in Tairāwhiti, we aren’t starting from an easy position.
We have thousands of kilometres of roads to maintain across a huge region. We have ageing infrastructure that needs replacing. We have communities that need better drainage and flood protection. We are still dealing with the impacts of severe weather events. We have major biosecurity responsibilities and we need to start preparing seriously for climate change.
These aren’t flash new projects.
They are the basics.
In fact, 91% of GDC’s $172 million capital programme this year is going into core infrastructure like water, solid waste and roading.
And then there are the things we haven’t even got to yet.
Our next Long Term Plan is where our community gets to have a conversation about what else we want for Tairāwhiti for the next 10 years. These are choices.
Fixing a broken road isn’t.
Keeping sewage out of our rivers isn’t.
Protecting communities from flooding isn’t.
Meeting our legal obligations isn’t.
So when Central Government talks about imposing an arbitrary rates cap of 2–4%, my question is pretty simple:
What happens when the cost of doing what we HAVE to do is more than 4%?
Because the bill doesn’t magically disappear.
Something has to give.
We borrow more.
We increase fees and charges.
We defer replacing infrastructure.
We reduce services.
We stop doing something else.
Or Government helps pay for the things it requires us to do.
I absolutely believe councils need to be financially disciplined. We should have to justify what we spend and our community deserves transparency about where every rates dollar goes.
But there also needs to be some honesty in this conversation.
You can’t keep handing councils more responsibilities, leave local communities to pay for them, and then arbitrarily restrict the very revenue councils use to deliver them.
For a region like ours, that matters.
Rates affordability matters.
But so do safe roads.
So does clean drinking water.
So does drainage.
So does flood protection.
So does maintaining the infrastructure our kids and mokopuna will inherit.
Perhaps the bigger question isn’t simply:
“How do we stop rates going up?”
Maybe it’s:
“What do we expect our council to provide, what does it actually cost, and who should fairly pay for it?”
Because capping the rates doesn’t cap the costs.
It just means eventually, something has to give.
