Tasman Council’s Proposed Fee Hikes Outstrip Inflation

Saturday, 22 March 2025, 8:44 pm
Article: Max Frethey - Local Democracy Reporter

Tasman District Council is proposing to hike most of its fees and charges for the next financial year by 10%, much higher than the current annual inflation rate of 2.2%.

Some areas, such as dog registration fees and official information requests, might see even greater increases.

Dog registration would also jump from $65 to $90 for urban dogs, $45 to $70 for rural dogs, under the proposal while a new working dog fee would be introduced at $50.

Ahead of a full council meeting on Thursday, resident and representative of local lobby group Tasman Democracy Mathias Schaeffner told elected members that the increases made no sense.

“We are all affected by inflation in the same way.”

He was particularly concerned by the “shocking” increase to the charges for Local Government Official Information Meetings Act (LGOIMA) requests.

The council’s proposal would see the cost for making LGOIMA requests jump 20% to $60 per half hour of council staff time (after an initial free hour), up from $50.

Schaeffner said he makes LGOIMA requests “from time to time”, and so the change would have a “big impact” on him.

He added that Tasman’s fee for processing LGOIMA requests was higher than the Ministry of Justice’s guideline of $38 per half hour beyond a free first hour for processing information requests.

The council’s general counsel, Leith Townshend, told elected members that processing LGOIMA requests took a “phenomenal” amount of staff time with 738 made in the 2024 financial year.

“If you assume that each one takes an hour, which we know that they don’t, that’s a significant amount of staff time being taken up, which we are not recovering.”

The council didn’t have a “hard and fast” policy of charging for LGOIMA requests yet, though one was being developed, but generally the council wouldn’t charge for requests that only took “a couple of hours”, Townshend said.

If a request was going to take a large amount of time, the council would stop processing the request to contact the requestor to see if they were comfortable paying the fee or wanted their initial request rescoped to decrease the amount of staff time needed to provide a response.

The cost of registering an urban dog will jump almost 40%, from $65 to $90, rural dogs will increase by 55%, while a new working dog fee will be introduced.

The distribution of costs was meant to reflect how the council’s dog control work was spread across the district’s canine companions.

“Working dogs … require some of our attention, not as much as rural dogs, which is not as much as urban dogs,” said Shannon Green, the council’s team leader for regulatory support.

Councillor Chris Hill said that increases to the council’s fees and charges were to ensure that the council’s services were user-pays and weren’t about increasing the council’s revenue.

“If you are being provided a service specifically for you … you pay for that and that’s not subsidised by other ratepayers.”

Chief financial officer Mike Drummond said the general 10% hikes to the council’s fees were greater than inflation because the council’s costs, which had increased, weren’t the same as residents'.

“We don’t have much groceries in our basket of goods, we don't have much overseas travel, we don't have much rent… so the [Consumer Price Index] movement is not a good indication of what happens to council’s costs. We buy a lot of bitumen. We buy a lot of fuel.”

He said notable areas of price increases affecting the council were in infrastructure and construction, electricity, and insurance costs, along with unfunded Government mandates.

“They all feed through”.

However, councillor Mark Greening thought the gap between consumer inflation of 2.2% and the 10% council fee increases was “rather large”.

“I understand this council is under financial pressure, but to continue … to reach even deeper into people's pockets, far deeper than even inflation, certainly hurts.”

Consultation on Tasman District Council’s entire schedule of proposed fees and charges for the 2025/26 financial year will open on Monday and run for a month until 28 April.

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