(Part 1)

Kapiti Coast District Council is clearly proceeding with a deliberate three-pronged strategy, which consists of:

1. Let’s sit tight and hope we’ll get a change of Government in November.  Let’s hope that a new Government will reverse what’s coming out of this current Government, so that we can keep on with high rates and “business as usual” (that is, business as we want it). That means we can ignore recent or upcoming legislative changes and messages from the Government about rates capping and the need for Councils to re-focus on core services and infrastructure and cut back on non-essential expenditure.
2. Let’s not talk to the public in the meantime. That way we can ignore their concerns about rates increases and won’t have to take on board any feedback that might be contrary to what we want to do.
3. Let’s kick the can down the road and put off public discussion about Council direction and expenditure until later in the year when we review the Long-Term Plan. That way in the meantime we can avoid public scrutiny of our annual plan for this year and the money we plan to spend, while we lock certain things in place………. for the 2026/27 year, and hopefully beyond.

Why do we say this?

It’s been six months since last year’s election and Concerned Ratepayers Kapiti have had a good number of interactions now, with some Councillors individually and with the Council as a whole.

Some things have really struck us about what we are seeing.  Even though the Government has very clearly signalled that it wants councils to reign in their rates increases in advance of rates capping coming into effect in 2029, KCDC is determined to continue down a high rates path. 

And they are determined not to talk to residents about the upcoming 6.4% rates increase, even though we have requested several times (and as recently as 13 April) that KCDC do so.  It took the Mayor only 3 hours to rebuff our last letter asking for the Council to change tack in light of the fuel crisis.

The Government has legislation ready to pass in Parliament designed to re-focus councils back to their core functions. We’ve suggested to KCDC several times that it needs to develop a plan to give effect to that impending legislation, once passed.  KCDC is having none of it. 

One of the things that this legislation is designed to do is to limit in law the scope of how councils can contribute to economic development.  The law change would – on a plain reading of the legislation – significantly reduce the scope of this Council’s so called “Economic Development Strategy”.  Yet this Council have congratulated themselves that they think they have created a structure that would get around the upcoming law change.  They are determined not to change a thing, even though Parliament will pass a law that should require KCDC to change and to scale back.  This strategy costs you about $3.1 million a year.

So … we have stood back and asked ourselves: “Looking across all of what we are seeing, what’s going on here?”

The Council’s approach could also be called ‘The Three Un-Wise Monkeys Strategy’, that is:

• Don’t see anything – like the need to change
• Don’t hear anything – like the concerns of the community Council is supposed to represent
• Keep mum and carry on – keep up the KCDC rhetoric under the guise of ‘communication’ but keep the public largely in the dark about the details and carry on with the Council’s underlying agenda.

This year, for the third year in a row, KCDC decided not to consult with the public about its proposed Annual Plan for the 2026/27 financial year. This is important because the Annual Plan and the budget for the coming financial year is the basis on which the Council sets the rate each year.

The last time the Council formally consulted with the public on its direction and expenditure plans was in early 2024 – for the Long-Term Plan (LTP). This evades the provisions and intention of the Local Government Act that the public has an intrinsic right to have their say every year on what the Council is doing and spending ratepayers’ money on, the expenditures the Council is proposing for the financial year ahead, and the justification for rates increases.  Denying the public that right is a fundamental breach of the principles of community representation.

The Council will tell you that legally they don’t have to consult on the Annual Plan unless there are ‘significant and material’ variations from the relevant year of the LTP. That is true – well, sort of. The Act does contain a provision for that, but the implicit intention of the Act is that that primarily applies for the first year of an LTP. It should not be viewed as a rationale for Councils to go on year after year avoiding public scrutiny of their activities and expenditures.

And the subterfuge behind all this is that Councils determine their own criteria for what is ‘significant and material’ in their ‘Significance and Engagement Policy’ and then argue that they only have to consult with the public when those criteria are triggered. And even in a year where there are major changes happening and significant expenditure decisions, KCDC still proceeded with a determination to avoid talking to the public.

This year there are lots of important things happening that the Council should be discussing with the community. This includes:

• How the Council is implementing ‘Local Water Done Well’ and the impact that will have on people’s rates and water charges
• How the Council intends to respond to the Local Government (Systems Improvement) Amendment Bill, which will be passed by Parliament by mid-year. This repeals the ‘wellbeing’ clauses in the Act, which provided the basis for much of the Council’s current expenditures on non-core activities.
• How the Council has taken into account the Minister of Local Government’s directive to local Councils to consider the intention of the intended Rates Capping legislation in their imposition of rates increases
• Why the Council is forging ahead with an expensive Economic Development strategy that will cost ratepayers an extra $3.1 m per year. This is to finance an initiative where Council will fund a new Economic Development Kotahitanga Board, with a Board of Trustees and a Council-Controlled Organisation for implementation, both to be set up with Council and iwi membership and other Council-appointed persons as Trustees and Directors.  The EDKB will syphon funding to selected businesses of its own choosing, funded 70% by ratepayers and 30% through a levy on existing businesses.
• How the Council plans to dispose of its current ‘social housing’ portfolio for older persons by ‘gifting’ the properties to a community housing provider, thus writing off a $21.5M ratepayer asset with no recompense to ratepayers.
• The justification for the Council’s corporate bureaucracy blowout over the last three years, with increases in staffing and in the salary costs of staffing.

KCDC’s three-pronged strategy allows them to ignore feedback from the public about its financial impacts on ratepayers and to avoid public scrutiny of their expenditure decisions.

Concerned Ratepayers Kapiti (CRK) has provided consistent feedback to KCDC over the last eighteen months that KCDC must get its expenditure under control and to do that, must change its budgeting and financial management approach and process. This advice – from a team of professionally experienced people with combined central and local government and business backgrounds, with significant governance and financial management expertise – has fallen on deaf ears.

The Council’s budgeting process is ‘cost-plus’ – which simply consists of passing cost increases on to ratepayers, with little attempt to curtail or put a cap on non-essential expenditure, or look at the potential for savings from greater efficiencies. CRK has advised that Council needs to make clear to the public the distinction between what money is spent on baseline commitments for core functions and what on non-essential ‘nice to have’ discretionary activities.

But this year once again the Council’s approach to the budget for the 2026/27 Annual Plan was that staff delivered up for Council consideration a range of ‘low hanging fruit’ options where small  amounts could be cut or reduced. Nothing about the ‘big ticket’ items, and nothing that would result in a reduction in staffing costs of course. But plenty of Council rhetoric on what a good job they have done on reducing what the rates increase might otherwise have been.

What’s behind the ‘Three Un-Wise Monkeys’ Strategy?  Apart from KCDC wanting to carry on with what they want to do and avoid having to talk to the public?………………

Follow us for our next instalment of ‘We Know What You’re Doing’.