Amalgamation would ease rates burden?

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 9

Amalgamation would ease rates burden?

Ratepayers upset by the increase in their rates bill could look to a more equitable sharing of costs under amalgamation, according to a Christchurch City councillor. Cr Matthew Glubb, chairman of the council’s policy and finance committee, said in a statement yesterday that anomalies between residences would continue as long as the property

value-based rating system continued. That system could not be altered without a change in legislation. “Only the present review of the structure of local government in the city holds the promise of a more equitable sharing of the total costs incurred in the running of metropolitan Christchurch,” Cr Glubb said.

He said that rates for all local authorities were based on property values. No alternative was permitted by the present legislation. Every single-unit residential property owner in the city paid identical amounts per dollar of value. “The present system is thus equitable,” he said. When the Christchurch City Council struck its rates for this year the increase for the average property was less than 10 per cent. The actual rate paid would vary with the value of the property. High-value properties would pay more in total than lesser-valued properties, Cr Glubb said. Property revaluation done every five years by the Government shifted the incidence of rating in the city. The last revaluation, last year, increased property values almost 45 per cent on average. Some properties increased more, others actually decreased, Cr Glubb

said. The Government revaluation redistributed the incidence of rates throughout the city, he said. In the hills suburbs and those in the west of the city the greater increase in value raised the rates. Cr Glubb said that the previous revaluation five years ago had reduced the rates of many of those properties 10 per cent. The present revaluation, which increased rates in those areas 30 to 50 per cent, had readjusted that advantage. The total required in rates for this year could not now be altered, nor could it be redistributed without shifting the burden on to another group of ratepayers, Cr Glubb said. He issued his statement in response to many inquiries and letters to newspapers by residents, especially those in Merivale, concerned about what they saw as an unjustified increase in their rates, in some cases of more than 100 per cent.