Former mayor on QLDC $2.4b expenditure plan: 'You've got no money'

A former mayor has asked elected members of the Queenstown Lakes District Council if they have gone through budgets "line by line" as they consider committing the district to $2.4 billion in capital expenditure.

Six-year mayor Vanessa van Uden was speaking on day one of public hearings on the council's draft Long Term Plan - one of approximately 100 people who have opted to speak to their submissions.

Ms van Uden says she hopes prime minister Christopher Luxon's comments on "nice to haves and have to haves" delivered at the Local Government New Zealand conference last week are front of mind as the council considers its priorities for the next ten years.

However Mayor Glyn Lewers was in the room last week to hear the prime minister's address, and the mayor says he "got the impression he was speaking to people outside the room not within the room" as he defends his council's spending priorities.

After taking away the chunky planned spends on three waters and roading, Mayor Lewers says, "it leaves very little else for nice to haves". 

The draft Long Term Plan sets out the services and projects the council is planning to deliver in the decade ahead, as well as how they will be funded and their impacts on rates.

In it the council signals a record rates hike of 15.6 percent for the year ahead.

The council received 939 submissions on the plan - 435 more than it did three years ago.

In promoting it, the council has been clear the plan will not deliver many of the things the community wants within a climate of significant financial constraints.

But it did not stop dozens of members of the community pitching pet projects at today's submission hearing at council's Gorge Road chambers, including improved sports fields, arts facilities, disaster readiness resources, and cycle trails.

As councillor Lyal Cocks put it: "Just about everyone we've listened to wants more..."

"For their thing," Councillor Niki Gladding finished for him.

However, that was about the extent of the back and forth between submitters on the Long Term Plan and the mayor and councillors.

Each submitter had five minutes, including time for questions, and there were few of those from elected members.

A proposal in the plan to introduce a targeted rate on Queenstown town centre properties to recover the costs of street upgrades in the area was opposed by many at the hearing.

Jarn Bulling was one of several local resident to argue the council is wrong to assume he and his neighbours benefit anymore than anyone else from the works.

He says the arterial road goes "completely around us", so it isn't fair for them to "foot the bill".

"It should be spread across the Whakatipu."

Another resident, Justine Byfield, says "the very people that have paid the most are being asked to pay the most". 

It is her view roading projects in the CBD "definitely" should be "sucked up by everybody" as the area is "the shop front window for Queenstown".

It was a sentiment echoed by some other bigger players - namely the Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce and Skyline - who also presented at the hearing.

Chamber chief executive Sharon Fifield says her members consider it "unacceptable" to propose they "retrospectively pick up the tab for cost overruns".

She says these costs "should not be left to one specific area of the district to shoulder".

Alistair Clifford, of Skyline, says the CBD "drives tourism that benefits the entire Whakatipu Basin".

He says the council's assumption therefore that those living and running businesses in the CBD benefit benefit disproportionately to other areas is "questionable", especially considering what they have had to "endure" in the process in terms of construction disruptions.

Another former mayor, Sir John Davies, also spoke at the hearing, touching on, among other things, the targeted rates proposal.

He says it is "unfair" how the council has divided up areas of who pays and who doesn't, arguing in some cases it appears to split streets with no obvious reason as to why.

"You have different rates on the right hand side (of a road), and you don't have them on the left."

Sir John says he remains critical of the council's tendering processes, on which he wants to see more competition.

He acknowledges the tough conditions the council is working within but urges them to make savings still.

"You're working hard, you've got no money, and I have some sympathy with you, but you've got to try and cut the costs. I agree with the prime minister. So get stuck into it and see what you can do."

While speaking to her organisation's submission, Ms Fifield says her members also want to know the council is assessing its own internal budgets alongside its spend on capital projects to ensure it is working as efficiently as it can to "lessen the burden on ratepayers".

Hearings for the plan will continue on Tuesday in Wānaka.