A lower-than-forecasted rate increase for the 2025/26 rating year was confirmed with the adoption of Hauraki District Council’s Annual Plan on Wednesday, 28 May 2025.
Mayor Toby Adams said that the Council’s 2024-2034 Long Term Plan had signalled a 13.3 percent average property rates increase for the 2025/26 rating year, but they wanted to do better than that.
“Given the current economic climate, we’ve scrutinised every budget and by tightening our belt, have gotten the average property rates increase down to 8.4 per cent”, he said.
Although overall, the combined rates increase percentage (non-water and water) has come down, a 15.3 per cent increase for water is higher than was originally forecast in the Long Term Plan.
“Water has been in the spotlight lately, so you’ll be aware that there are escalating costs due to meeting increased central government regulations along with a new central government levy that we are required to collect on behalf of the government from 1 July”, said Adams.
“On the flip side, due to the reduction in subsidy from Waka Kotahi, we’ve made the decision to reduce the proposed roading work programme rather than burden the ratepayer to cover the shortfall, which accounts for some of the saving.”
“We’ll be working hard to still deliver a quality roading works programme and have had some great outcomes recently with the reopening of Golden Valley Road, rehabilitation of a stretch of Pukekauri Road, and the major work going into Hauraki Road at the moment.”
Council also agreed to change the rates instalment dates to September and March. This will avoid the current situation where a number of residential ratepayers receive their first HDC rates bill in October, together with the Waikato Regional Council rates bill and their first water bill.
“Be assured that we’ll have a lot more comms coming out about these changes over the coming months, but as this was driven by feedback from our community, we wanted to highlight this positive change now”, said Mayor Adams.
Usually the adoption of the annual plan and setting the rates is done at the same time but Adams explained that there is still fine-tuning being done to shift the wastewater rate to the water billing system so Council will set the 2025/26 rates at the 25 June Council meeting.
The adoption of the 2025/26 Annual Plan did not require any public consultation and the Plan will be available for viewing on Council’s website next week.
“It’s nice to have some relatively good news to share with our community”, said Adams.
“Keeping things affordable while still delivering a quality service is at the forefront of all our thinking, and it’s great when it pays off”.
