Campaign Priority#3: Cap Rates to Inflation

23 September 2025

Councillor Duncan here, recalling my three campaign priorities:

#1 Restore Democracy

#2 Take Back Control of Council

#3 Cap Rates to Inflation

You can read about #1 and #2 here, but today I want to talk about #3 Cap Rates to Inflation which seems like a pipe dream to some, with abounding comments like:

Councils don’t run on bread and butter like the rest of us you know, what about the price of concrete?

What about catering for future growth?

Won’t our infrastructure fall to bits if we don’t put enough money into it?

The list can go on, but the fact of the matter is that if rates increase as per their current trajectory, anyone who doesn’t have a second fortune stashed away is going to be run off their own properties by the time they reach retirement. I am sure many have already.

One only has to look at the last few Long Term Plan (LTP) forecasts to see that an optimism reigns which takes no account of future uncertainties, and the self-imposed limits are continually being ratcheted upwards up from a mere 3% in 2018 to 7.7% in 2024 (and these get regularly exceeded anyway). Do people realise that Council staff will always find reasons to spend more money than we can actually afford, and it is legitimately and legally on elected members to reign things in? But that hasn’t been happening in Taupo for quite a long time.

What about doing fewer niceties? We can all probably think of a few things in the district that needn’t have happened, from the very expensive Council building saga from 2017 to the present day, to the Taupo town centre transformation project which many people still complain about, to the 6km of wire rope barrier on SH1 between Taupo airport and SH5 where there were no previous safety issues to speak of (okay that was NZTA and not Council). And yes, maybe even Boom Boom the dinosaur sculpture too.

What about doing stuff cheaper? Most of the Council debt goes towards infrastructure, and I know in my own professional field that smarter design can achieve a good enough result for a fraction of the price. For example these Compact Urban Roundabouts I developed a few years ago occupy much less road space than conventional designs which can make a big cost difference. So it is not all just about the price of asphalt, and having a guy or gal who knows just the right place to tap the hammer can be invaluable.

For one thing, I will tell you that the proposed $20M land disposal scheme (plus running costs) for the Turangi wastewater treatment plant is an absolute nicety. It has been portrayed to the public as necessary for environmental reasons, when that simply is not the case. It is being pushed along for cultural reasons alone, and goodness knows how much has been expended on consultants and staff time in the past five years plus. I wouldn’t mind so much if the constituents of Taupo were being properly informed, but that hasn’t been happening.

And what about that new bridge over the Waikato River we apparently so desperately need? I cover that in some detail here, but basically this Council spent $300K on a consultant last year to produce a lengthy study that not only didn’t even seriously consider options which could negate building an additional bridge altogether, but also failed to assess when the current bridge needs replacing. I found the sheer arrogance of the elected member leadership on this project to be quite astounding, and the workshop when it finally did happen in July 2025 nearly a year afterwards was a true gaslit gala of smoke and mirrors.

What about consultants? According to the Taxpayer’s Union Ratepayer Report of 2023, Taupo District Council spent over $50M on consultants and contractors the previous financial year. In comparison, Invercargill City Council and Kapiti Coast District Council with similar populations and staff numbers each spent less than $5M each on the same. So what’s going on? I haven’t been able to verify what these figures exactly do represent, but the Taxpayer’s Union are standing by them. Asking the same question again in 2025, I was told by our Council Chief Executive that this information is too laborious to readily access – and that seems strange to me, because this is an important metric that should be regularly reviewed. I think it is fine to hire a consultant if they are going to come up with better ideas to save us money, but from the examples above I can tell this is not always happening.

What about staff? Local amateur sleuth Sophie M Smith put out a recent article about the nearly $1M we spend each year on Communications and Public Relations staff salaries, and on top of that the $1.7M on marketing (which I understand includes the Destination Great Lake Taupo CCO which continues to claim that every dollar invested generates $800 of income for the district – yeah right). I think these aspects of Council are particularly overdue for review. Mayoral candidate Zane Cozens has mentioned that staff numbers at Taupo District Council have ballooned 30% in the past ten years, and I say what also needs to be asked is whether we are even employing the right people in the first place.

Why, oh why do things have to be this way?

The answer is: They don’t.

In an alternative universe where rates were capped a few decades ago and some common sense did prevail, for one thing I believe we would not have the current road cone nightmare – because Councils would have been so pushed that things wouldn’t have been allowed to get this far. That is one of the more visible symptoms of unrestrained bureaucratic spending, but there are also more bums on seats than necessary and probably a lot more besides.

I believe that tying Council rates to the inflation that consumers experience is not only doable, it is imperative to even be sustainable for residents to carry on living here. We just need to knuckle down and work smarter, and I know that it is possible. First term Mayor of Wanganui Andrew Tripe did it and without any magical silver bullets – so can we.