Call for review of legality of charges

Wednesday, 28 May 2025

A large civil construction and earthmoving company has raised questions over the legality of fees and charges proposed by the Timaru District Council.

Speaking during Annual Plan public hearings on Tuesday, Rooney Group’s Nathan Hole challenged the council to undertake an independent review before adopting any changes to its fees and charges relating to infrastructure and land transport.

Hole said the Rooney Group was concerned by year-on-year increases, a lack of information to support fees and charges and hourly charge rates of staff.

“It has been suggested that there are very few private businesses that could increase fees and charges at the rate council has been able to and still maintain their customer base.

“The point being that the public has no choice but to pay these charges when requiring council services,” Hole said.

He said infrastructure group admin fees had not been identified as a revenue source to fund core council activities, such as roading, footpaths and the three waters, in the revenue and finance policy.

“There appears to be a major inconsistency between the infrastructure group charges and how council has said it will fund its activities.

“This raises the question as to whether many of these charges are indeed lawful.”

He said the council was required to have funding policies under the Local Government Act.

The company was also concerned about land transport fees and charges, in particular those relating to infrastructure consents and corridor access requests, and described charges for working without them as “pseudo infringement fees”.

He said staff rates charged by the council “well exceed” comparable industry rates, and said the practice of charging infrastructure staff rates for admin and monitoring of consents was of concern.

He finished by asking the council to independently review the legitimacy of fees and charges of its infrastructure and land transport groups before adopting any changes.

“There’s a process that needs to be worked through to make these charges, and it should occur from the top down, not from the bottom up.”

Hole was one of 10 submitters who chose to speak to their Annual Plan submissions. The council received 129 submissions.

Woolworks New Zealand advisor Stephen Esposito, representing the 12 major industrial businesses in the Timaru Business Leaders Group, said they opposed increases to trade waste fees.

“For context, the trade waste charges to those businesses have increased 48% over the last four years, so if you look at all the other types of costs we have to manage through those businesses, it is quite a large increase that has already been absorbed.'”

Esposito said last year alone the increase was 25%, and for Woolworks that added $100,000.

It had been difficult to understand the increases as there had not been an “obvious” investment into the system, he said.

Most of the businesses, which included DB Breweries, Alpine Salmon, Sanford and McCain, were under a reasonable amount of financial pressure, he said.

He acknowledged the closure of the Alliance Smithfield plant and the flow-on impacts.

He said the revised proposal of a 7.8% fee increase was 'much better'' than the original 44% proposed.

'We're asking council to pause the increase this year,'' he said.

'We'd really like to work together with the council.''

Speaking on behalf of the Caroline Bay Rock and Hop, Hospice South Canterbury general manager Peter O'Neill and marketing and events manager Kim Rogers appealed for continued Major Events Funding for the annual fundraiser, and other events in the district.

This year the Rock and Hop received funding from the Venture Timaru-administered funding, with $175,000 raised during the four-day event.

“Our district would be much poorer without these events,” O’Neill said.

“The elephant in the room is that it makes money.'”

But he said it was vital for raising much-needed funds for the hospice.

Timaru CBD Group spokesperson Tim Black echoed that sentiment, saying the group also urged the council to continue funding major events.

Pointing out the economic benefits events brought to the district, Black said the funding was “a small investment that provides valuable return” to both the council and community.

He said the CBD was the heart of the district, and retail, hospitality and administrative activities drew large amounts of people there daily.

“Despite the many positive attributes of the Timaru CBD, it is subject to significant changes,'” Black said.

Parts were suffering from under investment, new buildings were rare, vacancy was reaching concerning levels and large parts had little, or no, activity at night.

Pointing out there was no budget in the 2025/26 plan to fund the CityTown project, he asked councillors to consider including $200,000 worth of funding to keep the plan to revitalise the town alive.

Black said the group also opposed a proposal to cut the budget for the town’s Christmas decorations, saying for a small cost the angels brought “widespread enjoyment”.

“They are a part of our heritage.”

Mayor Nigel Bowen replied, saying a story in The Timaru Herald on the proposal had let to a “positive” outcome with people in the community coming forward who were willing to help contribute to the lights.

“I think that it’s probably likely that there are a lot of people out there keen to help with maintenance or getting the decorations back up to a standard, so I think there’s opportunity for funding,” Bowen said.

He asked Black if the CBD Group had considered using its funding to contribute to the Christmas lights and events funding.

Black said while all its funding was allocated at the moment, the group could provide time and people as resources.

Dr Phil Driver told councillors he was not happy with the council’s proposal to cut funding to rural roads and bridges while spending money on “nice-to-have things like the Theatre [Royal]”.

He said he appreciated the councillors who wanted to reduce expenditure and had sympathy for chief executive who had “inherited a major financial problem that was not of his making”.

“If the consultation on the document on the theatre had told ratepayers that they were going to be either subsidising theatre goers or that the ticket prices were going to be $100, I don’t think many people would have supported the theatre.'”

Driver said consultation on the theatre was “incredibly lightweight” and as a global lecturer in strategy he gave it a “one out of 10”.

“It was essentially saying to theatre goers ‘you want a big theatre, medium theatre or no theatre’ and everyone else is going to pay for it.”

The do-nothing option should have been presented at the time of consultation as “save $50-odd million or spend that on other cultural events”.

To compare the amount of consultation, he said there had been more than 1000 hours of citizen input into climate change consultation, 10 public workshops and an advisory group.

Driver wanted the theatre funding to stop and substantially more be put into climate change which was a “major issue”.

He asked councillors to understand its impact themselves, or rely on what experts knew.

Bowen told Driver, “a lot of what you present we don’t actually disagree with it’s just who bears the cost of that” and said some of it would be picked up by central government.

Age Concern South Canterbury manager Chris Thomas said he was advocating for the 11,000-plus older residents in the district.

The district’s population included 3000 people aged over 80, Thomas said.

“That’s going to double to almost 6000.”

The $113,900 allocated for community funding in the plan was not a luxury item, but a “bare minimum”, he said.

“That fund enables you, enables us, to support organisations that are best placed to support older people in the community.'”

He said Age Concern recently received a $2500 grant from the council which would contribute to hiring a venue for its weekly Friday Club.

That and other social connection groups were good ways to connect older people to the community, he said.

“Social connection is great preventative care.

“Reducing or pausing this fund is going to have real impacts,” he said.

While he recognised budgets were tight, he said removing community funding was not a way to build community and cute would be felt hardest by those most vulnerable.

“I would very strongly advocate to keep the level of funding that is available.”

Geraldine Community Board chairperson Jan Finlayson shared the views of those in the town, and asked the council to continue funding projects there.

Finlayson said the town’s signage project had been refreshed through funding, as had a defibrillator project and one to support leisure activities.

“We wish to be able to keep delivering to our community in this way,” she said.

She said the Geraldine Town Hall, home to a cinema, was the cultural physical heart of the place and would turn 100 this year.

“The board asks for its earthquake strengthening,” she said.

Bowen said he appreciated the work of the board.

Finlayson said this would be of material value and symbolic value.

A structural engineer had suggested it could cost $2m to do the work, she said.

Councillors deliberated on the feedback and discussed the issues raised at length before agreeing to go with option two, to endorse an amended Annual Plan.

The Annual Plan was to be adopted on June 24.