Public consultation on two important topics opens today and Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale and Councillors are looking forward to getting out and about over the next month to talk to the community about the draft Annual Plan 2025/26 and Local Water Done Well.

The consultation period runs from 28 March until 5pm on Monday, 28 April.

Annual Plan 2025/26 consultation

The Mayor says this year’s draft annual plan is about finding the right balance – continuing to move the city forward for future generations, while keeping the cost of progress as fair and affordable as possible today.

“Tauranga is not alone in facing some significant financial challenges and we are conscious that the national economic situation affects all our ratepayers,” Mahé says.

“Tauranga is a growing city, and we need to commit to a level of investment than can maintain what we have now and pay for our future growth. But at the same time, we are mindful there is a trade-off between investing in much-needed infrastructure and what our ratepayers consider an affordable amount of rates to pay.”

Council’s approach has been to find savings across all areas of its operations, while at the same time prioritising capital spending on what is most important for the city.

Tauranga City Council Chief Executive, Marty Grenfell, spoke with staff on Thursday about a change process to realise some of these savings. The change process will look at both reducing personnel numbers and the structure of the organisation, while mitigating any significant impact on service delivery to the community. The proposal is to disestablish more than 100 roles across the organisation.

Key proposals for the draft Annual Plan 2025/26 include:

• An average rates rise of 12% - slightly below what was forecast in the 2024-34 Long-term Plan
• $29 million in operating cost savings across council’s day-to-day activities
• A commitment to seek to save at least a further $6.7 million more before the annual plan is adopted in June
• Reducing the planned capital spend for the year from $544 million to $505 million
• Financial prudence by balancing the budget and fully funding depreciation
• Total debt $81 million less than the long-term forecast.

“Changes in our financial situation meant we were facing a 20% increase in rates to cover the costs of delivering what had been planned for 2025/26, but the organisation has worked very hard to get that rates rise down to 12%,” Mahé says.

“I acknowledge we’re not where we want to be. We want more savings for ratepayers, and we will continue to search for these right up until we adopt this draft annual plan in June, and beyond.”

Local Water Done Well consultation

Alongside its Annual Plan, Council will also be asking the community for feedback on how to best deliver the city’s drinking water, wastewater and storm water services.

Under policy direction from Central Government, Local Water Done Well, all councils are required to consult with their communities and decide on a proposed future delivery model.

Following assessment of the options, Council’s proposed model is a multi-council controlled organisation (CCO) with potential partners, including Western Bay of Plenty District Council or other councils that are focused solely on water management. Its alternative model is a Tauranga City Council standalone CCO which would also focus on water management but is solely owned and controlled by Tauranga City Council. Or council could keep its current model, where water services are in-house.

Mayor Drysdale says council used a business case approach to assess all our options.

“Following extensive assessment and modelling, we think the best long-term delivery model is to move to a joint council-controlled organisation, in partnership with other councils. This model shows that we can achieve benefits based on scale and size, while effectively retaining ownership of our waters assets.

“A council-controlled organisation also means that we would be able to appoint directors or trustees with the expertise needed to deliver high quality and affordable water and wastewater services which will meet the community’s needs far into the future.

“It would also provide access to a small to moderate increase in debt capacity compared to what we could achieve if we were to keep these services within Council. For Tauranga, that means being better able to meet demands driven by future growth and technological advances” Mahé says.

The consultation includes supporting information on each of the potential models to help the community provide comments on the available options alongside a series of values-based questions.

Tauranga residents are encouraged to come along to a community event in their neighbourhood to share their feedback on the draft annual plan and future water services proposal with the Mayor and Councillors.

For more information and to share your feedback online, please visit

https://letstalk.tauranga.govt.nz/

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