Property rates now available on line

Homeowners are able to visit the Waitakere City Council’s website on www.waitakere.govt.nz and see what rates they will be paying for the coming year.

For the next week access will be via a special link and after that the information can be obtained from the website in the normal way.

The council is promoting this service to assist ratepayers to find out as quickly as possible what their rates will be this year, rather than wait for the first rates notice in August.

The service would be available within 10 days of the adoption of the annual plan in any year, but the Council has brought the service forward to this week, because many ratepayers may be expecting to pay rates based on capital value.

The council wrote to ratepayers in April, telling them what their rates would be if the capital value system was adopted, instead of the traditional land value system.

However, after submissions from the community, the council has retained the land value system for the next year but has changed its method of charging for wastewater.

There will now be a fixed annual charge for wastewater of $350, plus a small variable component based on a property’s land value. Where a property provides more than one dwelling - for example if a house is divided into two flats, or if there are two houses on the one property – $350 each will be charged on each one.

These changes will see rates being charged that are different from those indicated in the letter sent to home-owners in April.

“We decided it was better to spend another year on analysis before making any final decisions,” says Councillor Ross Clow, deputy chairman of the Finance and Operational Performance Committee.

“However, we felt that we had to change the wastewater component now. Charging for wastewater as a percentage of a property’s value has no relationship to how much wastewater the property generates,” he says.

The council will spend the next 12 months analysing the three rating options available to it – land value, capital value and annual value systems. It will consult on the options before making a final decision on which system to use and how to use it.

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