Council adopts plans for the next 10 years

During 2023 and 2024, we prepared our Long Term Plan for 2024-34, and we asked you what you thought about our plan through the Love This Place consultation document during March and April 2024.

On 27 June 2024, we adopted our Long Term Plan. It’s our key planning document that outlines our work programme and strategic direction for the 2024 to 2034 ten year period. This came into effect on 1 July 2024. 2024-34 Long Term Plan

You told us what you think | Kua kōrero mai koe ōu whakaaro, tēnā rawa atu koe

Thanks for providing your feedback on our plans for 2024-34. We read and listened to all feedback at a hearing in May 2024, and then made decisions on our final plan. You can view our completed long term plan document on this page.

If you requested to be notified of the decisions about your feedback, keep an eye on your inbox or mailbox – we will be notifying you individually of the outcome of your feedback in July 2024.

Our Long Term Plan 2024-34 | Tō Mātou Mahere Roa 2024-34

During the feedback period we received some great suggestions and comments, which really helped with our decision-making. After listening to everyone’s thoughts and ideas, we made some key decisions. You can read about the key decisions below:

Rates increases

We proposed in our Love This Place consultation document that rates would need to increase 17.4% in year 1 (2024/25) of the Long Term Plan just to continue to provide the services at the standard our community currently expect. This was largely due to the impacts of inflation, interest and depreciation (all things outside of our control). We also needed to upgrade our wastewater treatment (with significant cost in replacing the Paeroa wastewater treatment plant) to ensure we meet growth and increasing central government regulations.

Western Plains Primary Stopbanks

We proposed that to maintain the current level of service of Land Drainage for the Western Plains Drainage District we would need to increase how much we top up our stopbanks to respond to climate change. Our community agreed with our plans and this work is scheduled to begin in year 10 of our long term plan. We currently maintain these stopbanks to 3.0 metres and we will slowly increase this to RL 4.0 metres in height (Tararu datum).

Waihī Art Centre and Museum

Council owns the Waihī Art Centre and Museum building, we proposed in our Love This Place consultation document that our preferred option was to bring this building up to required minimum (34% of code) seismic strengthening work. Our communities agreed with us and this work is scheduled for year 10 of our long term plan, this is in anticipation that there will be a greater allowance of time to complete this work by central government. Council will continue to maintain this building in the interim which includes a replacement of the roof in 2024/25.

We also adopted the following…

2024/25 Fees and charges

We asked for feedback from the community on our proposed fees and charges for 2024/25 these were adopted alongside our 2024-34 LTP and can be viewed here 2024/25 Fees and Charges.

Rates Remission and Postponement Policies

We proposed some tweaks to our Rates Remission and Postponement Policies, these policies were adopted alongside our 2024-34 LTP and can be viewed here Rates Remission and Postponement Policies

Development Contributions Policy

We also reviewed our Development Contributions Policy and this was adopted alongside our 2024-34 Long Term Plan. The updated Policy can be viewed here Development Contributions Policy.