Whakatāne District Council has approved its draft annual plan, including a proposed 11.7% average rates hike.
Council have also found $1.5 million in savings, that's likely to be used to try reduce a $14 million operational deficit over six years.
“Elected Members have been clear, we need to get out of the operating deficit, where everyday costs are exceeding our income,” Chief Executive Steven Perdia said.
The draft plan's also looking at create no new jobs until next year.
Another aspect of the draft annual plan would see Council shortening their loan repayment terms from 25 years to 10 years.
In the Council meeting today, Councillor Andrew Iles voted against the proposed 11.7% average rates hike, saying things are getting worse for many families.
Iles said while it's nice for Council to reduce its debt internally, he thinks it's come “at the expense of some of these households which are really going to struggle to find this additional rates increase.”
He suggests that Council, at some point, consider the whole district's circumstances “whether it be old-age pensioners who are on fixed incomes” or “young families struggling to get food on the table.”
Councillor John Pullar also opposed the rates hike and told Council, he wanted the average rate increase at 12.7%.
Pullar said they're no longer able to kick the can the road, as it's now been squashed flat.
Pullar said Council is putting off any hard decisions, until after the local elections.
“We hear about people who can't buy milk, can't do this, can't do that. I wonder what people we're talking about,” Pullar said.
“We've got roughly 40,000 people in this area and are we going to cane 38,000 of them because we're trying to look after one thousand?”
Councillor Gavin Dennis wanted the proposed increase to be at 10.7%, but agreed with Pullar that they can no longer kick the can any further.
But Dennis said there's more than 2,000 people struggling across the district.
Councillor Wilson James said they had to come to “a compromise and try to be satisfactory to other people,” with other councillors expressing similiar sentiments.
Mayor Victor Luca was not happy about the proposed increase but said compromises and trade-offs had to be made, in order to get to a number, that pleases everyone.
He said they can't rehash the LTP again and that rehasing the annual plan would mean, they would have to go to full consultation again “which would be quite onerous and costly.”
The draft plan is set to be finalised by the end of June.