Everyone’s finding making ends meet tough. Food, general bills and necessities to live have all gone up, and water rates will too this month.
But thankfully, they will not be the 25.8% increases previously forecast. Aucklanders should not have to pay for the absence of financial planning for our water networks.
My deal through Local Water Done Well with the Government gave us just what we’d asked for: it got Watercare the balance-sheet separation it needed to allow much-needed projects to progress. It also capped your water rates at 7.2%, while retaining local control of water assets.
Getting things done better, cheaper, faster while still providing the necessities needed to maintain our critical networks has been a cornerstone of my mayoralty.
As part of this, Watercare has already begun significant upgrades to water networks in your region to make sure it’s ready for future growth. There has been a substantial amount of planning, investigation and engagement with significant effort to find the best way forward for this maintenance and growth. The Central Interceptor is near completion and the Point Erin extension has been given the go-ahead. These are huge projects that are the backbone to our water networks in Auckland.
This is progress and it prioritises the necessities. It’s no secret the degrading pipes below our streets, many over 100 years old, are expiring. We could not let this embarrassing neglect continue. This will allow us to get on with it and upgrade Auckland’s neglected water networks which have become an embarrassment for many.
Making deals is what I do, and I know a good deal when I see it. The alternatives to this deal were for Auckland Council to borrow more, which could have resulted in excessive pressure on its credit rating. The deal we achieved stops Auckland Council having to choose between necessities: borrowing for pipes or borrowing for roads or fixing storm damage.
The cost of Watercare’s borrowing will increase, but that’s part of letting them have more debt to spread the cost, rather than imposing all the cost on current users now. Long term assets can be paid off over the long term – that’s what you do with house mortgages, it’s the right thing to do when huge investment is required, it just makes sense.
This Government has made some fairly sensible decisions and the Prime Minister and I get on well. We told them we should have more say about how we manage and deliver our water systems. They took this feedback seriously and worked closely with me to come up with this solution which allowed us to put water rates on the much more sustainable footing for the infrastructure we need.
I am also advocating for the developments of brownfields over greenfields, that is, to redevelop land into housing developments where it makes sense, before reaching further into the outskirts of housing where costly new infrastructure would have to be built. I go on about it but it’s about making the most of what we have.
For example, we’re still at risk of losing some of our best and most precious vegetable growing land in Pukekohe to housing. The Government made a deal with us on water and has signalled they’re looking at returning a portion of GST collected on new residential builds, as per one of my manifesto requests, but they are yet to make the same sensible commitments here, so watch this space. (Wayne Brown)
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Mayor.Wayne.Brown@Aucklandcouncil.govt.nz
30 July 2024
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