Every Council has to weigh up the services it provides, operational spending, capital spending, debt, and the money it brings in (including your rates) and then strike a prudent balance that keeps things running effectively.

Operational costs

For the first three years of this LTP, we’ve set our core operational spend at $806 million in the first year, $835 million in the second year, and $855 million in the third year. For the remaining seven years of this LTP, our core operational spend will increase to between $872 million and $989 million a year.

Capital programme

For the first three years of this LTP, we’ve set our core capital spend at $566 million in the first year, $608 million in the second year, and $664 million in the third year. We have deliberately set our capital programme at this level because we want to ensure it is deliverable.

In addition to the core programme, we have committed $286 million through 2025–27 to complete Te Kaha.

What impact does this have on our rates?

Operational and capital spending have different effects on rates because we mostly borrow for one, and rate for the other. For example, approximately $7 million of extra operational spend has a 1% impact on rates while approximately $94 million of extra spend on capital projects has a 1% impact (over two years) due to rating for the interest and principal repayment, similar to a mortgage payment. Whenever we make a decision about capital spending, we need to factor in the full cost over time.

What matters to our residents

As a Council, we are required to deliver a range of services.

We often hear that our residents want us to ‘stick to the basics’. However, it’s also clear from the feedback we receive in our consultations and residents’ surveys that there are a lot of different perspectives and expectations about what the basics actually are – one person’s ‘must haves’ are another person’s ‘nice to haves’.

Each year we receive feedback from you in our Annual Residents survey about where we are doing well, and where we need to improve. The 2024 Residents Survey results tell us that while there are areas where we are doing well, there are also several areas where you think we could be doing better (water supply, roads and footpath condition, the presentation of our community parks, trust in the Council). The services that require the most improvement are also the ones that require the most capital.

Last year we asked you in our What Matters Most campaign to tell us what core services matter most to you:

• approximately 4,000 participants took part in an activity that asked people to prioritise the different Council services
• 3,825 took part in nearly 80 in-person activities held at various community events and meetings, and at Council libraries.

The findings from the What Matters Most campaign clearly show that while everything is important to someone, there are some services that matter more than others to our residents. They also reconfirm some of the key messages that we hear in our Residents Survey each year.

By combining the findings of what services matter most to people, with how satisfied people are with these services, we get an insight into what our communities think Council should prioritise. This input has been invaluable to councillors and staff in the development of this draft LTP.

The projects listed here are a combination of work we’ve already consulted on and is now underway, and projects and programmes that we’ll consult on separately, as required, in the coming years of this LTP.

For the full proposed capital programme, see Volume 1, page 175 in the Draft LTP.

Or you can view our capital programme and operational spending on our interactive bubbles tool.

Projects and programmes at a glance