The Council gets its money from a range of sources, including rates, borrowing, and money from user charges and government grants, especially from NZTA for roading.
This section outlines how much money comes from each source, what we will spend it on this year, including both operating spending and capital investment, and what specifically you are paying for with your rates.
In 2018/2019, less than half of our total funding will come from your rates, as shown in the table below.
Sources of Council funding | % |
Rates | 44% |
Dividends and interest | 21% |
Fees, charges, grants, and subsidies | 14% |
Development contributions | 2% |
Transfers from reserves | 12% |
Borrowing | 1% |
Capital grants and subsidies | 6% |
Total | 100% |
In 2018/2019, we will spend a total of $1.04 billion on operating and capital costs, excluding housing, which is funded separately from its own rental income.
This total spending is split between our various groups of activity as shown in the table below.
Corporate expenses includes everything that's not directly related to a single activity - most importantly, interest costs on earthquake-related borrowing and on-lending ($78 million), IT investment ($26 million), an investment in the performing arts precinct and Town Hall ($23 million).
Total Council spending, by activity | $000 | % |
Communities and citizens | 198,271 | 19% |
Flood protection and control works | 25,429 | 2% |
Governance | 15,731 | 2% |
Parks, heritage and coastal environment | 67,688 | 6% |
Refuse disposal | 49,563 | 5% |
Regulatory and compliance | 53,418 | 5% |
Roads and footpaths | 145,859 | 14% |
Stormwater drainage | 36,527 | 4% |
Strategic planning and policy | 43,042 | 4% |
Transportation | 75,295 | 7% |
Wastewater | 105,450 | 10% |
Water supply | 63,883 | 6% |
Corporate expenses | 161,523 | 16% |
Total | 1,041,679 |
100% |
Much of the spending in the above table is paid for by our non-rates revenue, especially dividends, user charges, and funding from NZTA and others.
The activities specifically paid for by your rates in 2018/2019 are shown in the table below. This is just a different way of expressing the total spending table above, but only showing the amount of our spending that's paid for specifically by your rates.
For context, we've presented it in two ways: The number of cents spent on each activity per dollar of rates that you pay, and what this works out to be per week for the average residential ratepayer. For example, the average home-owner pays around $4.93 per week for parks, heritage and coastal environment.
How your rates will be spent | Cents per dollar of rates paid | Average residential rates per week |
Communities and citizens | 23.4 cents | $11.89 |
Flood protection and control works | 2.0 cents | $1.02 |
Governance | 3.3 cents | $1.68 |
Parks, heritage and coastal environment | 9.7 cents | $4.93 |
Refuse disposal | 7.9 cents | $4.01 |
Regulatory and compliance | 1.9 cents | $0.97 |
Roads and footpaths | 12.3 cents | $6.25 |
Stormwater drainage | 5.6 cents | $2.85 |
Strategic planning and policy | 7.8 cents | $3.96 |
Transportation | 0.6 cents | $0.30 |
Wastewater | 14.3 cents | $7.27 |
Water supply | 11.2 cents | $5.69 |
Total | 100.0 cents | $50.82 |