QLDC mayor John Glover: Rates cap likely to force innovative thinking.

Queenstown Lakes District Mayor John Glover can see positive aspects to the Government’s local council rates cap announcement this afternoon.

Speaking to Crux shortly after the announcement Mayor Glover said that he’d been in long term plan meetings today that served to highlight “the incredibly tough choices ahead.”

“It’s our job to lead the discussion with the community and agree on priorities. We need to front foot this - and certainly council spending was probably the key election issue for all of the candidates.”

“Innovation can lead to new ways of doing things. New partnerships. It will be that line by line analysis that’s already been discussed publicly as something the community wants to see.”

“Every household has to make these same type of budgeting decisions after all. We must speak our truth.”

Mayor Glover said the first substantial discussion on the impact of the rates cap announcement will be at a pre-arranged meeting of Otago mayors this Friday.

“We’ll take stock and discuss this at mayoral level initially. For our communities it won’t be so much about what work is valued, but about what work we can afford to do.”

Mayor Glover admitted that the double whammy of regional government reform (where regional councils may be abolished) and today’s rates cap announcement made for interesting times.

He highlighted though that a reduction in resource consent work load (from RMA reforms) would not help councils much as “that’s one area that already washes its face financially.”

“We were warned at a recent Local Government conference that we’d be running around with our pants on fire during the closing stages of 2025. They were not wrong!”