By popular demand, we have summarised how this initiative is working and is planned to work (fail?).

KCDC plans to spend $31 million on economic development over 10 years—the money is used to fund a group of people who distribute money out as grants for local organisations, events and other economic initiatives. Think Otaki Kite Festival, Kapiti Food Fair, Kapiti Women’s triathlon and Maoriland Film Festival amongst many others. 

 Who Pays? Let’s answer this first as KCDC would have you believe it comes out of targeted business rates. Wrong! 67% of this funding comes from everyday ratepayers, not businesses. Only $769k/year is paid by targeted business rates. This has been uncovered by an OIR.

 How this money is being managed?

The return to the average ratepayer is questionable to say the least. Most of the council-funded ventures lack clear targets or accountability, and many small businesses fail regardless of subsidies. In fact, this can be as high as 40% within the first 5 years. The nonsense can be seen in the numbers KCDC present to us. The activities being undertaken by the EDKB cannot self-fund in the first 10 years as we are continually tipping money in.

Look at all the people, presumably being paid, who are allocating these monies. https://www.businesskapiti.co.nz/about/

 A Better Way Forward – we should be considering

Whether funding private enterprise is the business of local government. We certainly don’t think so.

If we are going to fund private enterprise, let’s ensure there are clear published metrics around anticipated and actual performance. For example no. of jobs created per $1000 of spend. etc.

We kind of understand now why Councillor Cooper and Councillor Wilson voted this down. They were in the minority.

Remember, the Council will tell you to cut the things you care about when it comes to looking at how to save money. We show you where our ratepayer $ really go.