What is a Long Term Plan?

The Long Term Plan sets the direction for our district and is reviewed every three years. It outlines Council’s activities and how they’re managed, delivered, and funded.

This one's a little different

Last year, we chose to adopt an Enhanced Annual Plan after the Government made this option available. This gave us more time to better understand changes to the Government waters reform programme and the financial challenges that presented for us, so we can make the best decisions for Waipā.

Those challenges remain.

A vastly different financial environment driven by significantly higher inflation and interest costs, a sharp economic slowdown, and much higher levels of debt, has placed limitations on what we can do. We don’t have the money to spend on cornerstone projects, so we don’t have any big-ticket items to consult with you on.

At the same time, we are consulting with you on the future delivery of water services for our district.

We are working in a dynamic, changing environment and in nine years time it is likely the Waipā District, and our role within it, will look quite different.

Rates increases

We estimate an average residential household will pay $86.37 per week, or around $4,491 in the 2025/26 year, for the activities and infrastructure we propose in our plan.

How much you pay can depend on a number of things like: The value of your property, the services your property is rated for, and changes to the amount we charge for those rates. If your property doesn’t receive water or wastewater services from us, for example, you are not charged rates for those components.

Where do rural rates go?

If your property doesn’t get water or wastewater services from us, you won’t be charged for them.

Even if you live in a rural area, your rates still help pay for important services like:

• Looking after gravel roads and rural transport routes
• Managing stormwater and protecting against floods
• Keeping rural halls and community spaces running
• Waste and recycling services in some rural areas

Our Draft Financial Strategy

This strategy outlines the Council’s overall approach to planning and managing its finances in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

It is a central component of Council’s draft Long Term Plan. The Draft Financial Strategy sets our limits on rates increases and debt, illustrates the overall financial implications of decisions made in the Long Term Plan and is key in demonstrating prudent financial management.

Over the next nine years, we are planning a huge investment of ratepayer and developer dollars so it’s important this money is spent in the context of a well-considered financial strategy.

We also want to ensure that rates are affordable over time, for both current and future ratepayers, and we have included an affordability measure within our strategy. This is a threshold of no more than five percent of median household income to measure rates affordability for all Council activities. Within that, there is a two percent threshold for the cost of water and wastewater.

We've needed to prioritise

Due to the financial environment, it is a challenge to balance the expectations from the community and the affordability of services for both the community and Council both now and into the future.

We've have had to make some tough decisions about some key cornerstone projects that we know are important to our communities.

What we plan to deliver over the next nine years

Taking all these elements into consideration and through applying our prioritisation principles we are planning to spend $2.7 billion of operating and capital expenditure over the next nine years.

Where will the money come from?

In the first three years of this plan, up to 75 per cent of our revenue comes from rates, this drops back to 65 per cent from year four. A large portion comes from other sources like fees and charges (when someone pays for a Council service they use), government subsidies, development contributions and grants.

Where will the money go?

Here’s where the money will be spent in the next nine years, including operating expenditure.