Rate call blamed on farmer pressure

Press, 31 May 1986, Page 9

Rate call blamed on farmer pressure

Farmer pressure underlay a call for rural rating in Akaroa to include a uniform annual charge, suggested two Akaroa County councillors yesterday.

The council has approved in principle the introduction of a uniform annual charge for rural properties, and given its staff approval to report on the effects of a charged of the present rating system. The amount to be charge would be decided later.

Crs John Smythe and Phillip Cooke voted against the motion. The general effect of the charge would be to transfer a greater share of the rating burden from larger rural properties to “rural residential properties,” including holiday homes. The charge would not apply to Akaroa township.

Cr Cooke said that a uniform annual charge should not be introduced because land values for rating would change next year with new Government valuations. Farmland valuations were likely to remain static and holiday homes to increase.

Holiday home owners, whose rates would sub-

sequently increase, would be further penalised by a uniform annual charge, he suggested.

Non-residential ratepayers did not use council facilities as much as local people.

“This is coming from the farming community,” Cr Cooke said.

Cr Smythe agreed that the rate burden would be shifted from the farming community with the new valuations. A report on the effects of the annual charge should wait until the valuations were available. The call for the charge came from “a pressure group of farmers,” he said.

Cr Robyn Grigg supported a uniform annual charge, saying that it was wrong to assume that those with high-valued properties should automatically pay higher rates.

“Every ratepayer should pay an equal share of administration. I believe it no longer has to be the burden of those who own expensive properties,” she said. Non-residential ratepayers paid the same rates as anyone else in other areas, and Akaroa should be no exception.

Allowances Councillors voted to give themselves the full increases in remuneration permitted by the Internal Affairs Department and to backdate the increase to April 1, 1985.

Cr Grigg said that it was important that councillors received adequate remuneration, or standing for the council would become the privilege of the male middle-class. Cr Cooke said that payments to councillors must be increased because of the lost working hours that council duties entailed.

Two councillors supported the increase of attendance fees to $35 a day, but did not agree with the backdating. Cr Grigg sugggested, however, that the added cost to ratepayers could be offset if the council gave up its full lunch in favour of a lunch of sandwiches.

The Canterbury United Council had sandwich lunches and “if Sir Hamish Hay can have a sandwich lunch we as a council can have one too,” she said.