Proposed rates for the next 10 years

*Total rates revenue includes targeted rates from metered water that is charged to large industries and extra-ordinary water users.

Increases in three waters operating expenses, capital budgets and debt have a significant impact on Council finances in the early years of this plan.

The changes are driven by the need:

• to comply with tougher regulations - particularly for drinking water and sewerage treatment.

• to have more robust systems to deliver the services we provide to the standards expected.

Regulators can have a major influence on the focus and timing of investments Council has to make. Council has more choice/discretion in our other activities. For this reason, Council has decided to set two rating limits for the 10-year period:

Wait... did you just say if I'm connected to water/wastewater, my rates are going up by 25%?

These limits relate to the targeted rates for water, wastewater and stormwater services – so those portions of your rates bill (combined) would increase by a maximum of 25% in year one, or 11% in years two and three. It doesn't mean your whole rates bill would increase by 25%

These are firstly shown as a percentage increase and then as dollars based on a $700,000 property (the median value for our district). It also shows where Council is proposing to set the limits on rate increases.

• The green bars show projected rate increases for all our services, EXCLUDING water, wastewater and stormwater. If your property doesn’t have water, wastewater or stormwater services, then you only need to look at the green bars.

• The blue bars show projected rate increases and decreases just for water services. If you have a fully serviced property, then you will be affected by both the green and blue bars

• The orange bars show the projected increase in total rates – that is the total rate revenue that Council collects from the whole district including from our large industrial metered water users.

● The average increase over the next 10 years is 4.13% per year (excluding three-waters), or 6.44% per year (if you include three waters).

● The percentages and values in these graphs reflect how much more money we would need to collect to deliver the proposed services. The values shown above are based on a median property valued at $700,000, your actual rates increase will be based on your property value and is likely to be different to this percentage.

● Things change. Government regulations change, inflation changes, and problems and opportunities come up. That’s why we do an Annual Plan every year - to see how we’re tracking against this Long Term Plan, and make adjustments for the year ahead. These numbers are our best projection - but they are likely to change.

● We use the best available data to predict what inflation will be. But for the last two years, actual inflation was 2-2.5 times more than we projected. While we do what we can to stay within our self-imposed rates limits, factors outside our control can affect this.