THE PRESS THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1986. The uniform rates charge

Press, 28 August 1986, Page 20

THE PRESS THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1986. The uniform rates charge

Christchurch City ratepayers who regard the City Council’s uniform rates charge as unfair are wrong. The charge, introduced in this year’s rates, goes a little way towards rectifying the injustice of a rating system that had been based almost entirely on the unimproved value of each property. At $l5O for each household, the uniform charge is still well below the average rate paid by city households. Households that pay the lowest rates are still not being required to meet the true cost of the services they receive. Most households in the city receive or have available roughly the same range of services. In the past they have been asked to pay for those services, not according to what they use, but according to their presumed ability to pay. That ability has been measured by the Government valuation of their properties, a figure that can fluctuate widely when it is revised each five years. Many of the changes in value — generally upwards — are for reasons well beyond the control of the householders who are being asked to pay. The result, for many years, has been a substantial redistribution of income between ratepayers. People with more valuable properties have been subsidising those whose properties are worth less. What they originally paid for the properties, and could

afford, may now be the reverse. The uniform charge goes a little way towards reducing the unfair imposition on those people with more valuable properties. Further changes, in the rating system will be made once the question of local authority amalgamations in Christchurch has been resolved.

Local authorities — for many years and in many parts of the world — have sought a more equitable way of distributing the cost of essential local services. Various rating systems have been tried; various forms of taxation, such as local sales raxes, or a poll tax on all individuals, have also been tried. No system has pleased all those who are subject to it; every system, is unfair to someone, to some degree. Christchurch City, by combining a system of rating on property values with the new, modest uniform charge, has gone a little way towards the principle endorsed by the central Government that the users of services should pay for what they receive. The system is still unjust to many ratepayers, although not generally to those who have been protesting against the uniform charge. If anything, an anomaly of long standing, but increasing significance, has been modified. A tendency, encouraged by rating, to create rich areas and poor areas, has been moderated.