Landing a vision for Kāpiti together | Kia whakatauhia he ara kotahi mō Kāpiti katoa

Council considered the priority of existing services, projects, and costs through the LTP process, and set out a strong agenda for cost savings and affordability through its financial strategy.

Key elements of the financial strategy include:

• Everyday operating costs being fully funded from everyday operating revenue to ensure that a balanced budget and intergenerational equity is met.
• Capping staff levels at 436 for the next three years to stabilise fixed operating costs. 
• Capping the capital programme to between $70 and $100m through the 10-year period, so variable operating costs such as that depreciation and interest are managed within a reasonable range whilst ensuring appropriate asset management, renewal and planned new assets.
• Reducing net debt by $153 m (down to $262 m) by 30 June 2034.

As a result of reduction in the capital programme, Council will prioritise work over the 10-year period on the basis of available funding within the cap set. It is expected that priority projects will progress, but less urgent or necessary projects will be delayed or deferred through to later periods.

Our annual plans allow us to check our progress against the LTP and make changes where conditions warrant it. The three-year cycle allows us to check in with you on future plans and budgets, to ensure they still reflect the local and wider environment and our community’s aspirations for the future.

Stakeholders generally refers to individuals, groups, or organisations that have an interest in or will be impacted by the project or programme. Sometimes they may be representative, for instance people selected for working groups may represent a broad section of the community, other times we may be talking about a collection of individuals, such as residents who may be directly impacted by a new development. 

Our stakeholders for Vision Kapiti include our whole community. That’s why we have aimed to offer a number of avenues for feedback. We have been out at our libraries, online, and at Coastlands and train stations as well as attending events like the Kāpiti food fair, and the recent Ki te Āpōpō Rangatahi expo. Our Community Boards have also been at market days, visited schools and held workshops locally to make sure the local perspective comes through clearly.

Stakeholders for the Vision Kāpiti work going forward also includes iwi, central government, business, industry and networks and advisory groups. These are the people we will need to work with to make progress.

These are reflections from our Elected Members on themes they have heard repeatedly when talking to members of the community, as well as through this engagement specifically. More detail about numbers for the feedback we have received directly in Vision Kāpiti is available in our Summary of Feedback documents.

We’re specifically referring to the kinds of things that have affected the North Island in particular, but also the West Coast or the South Island in the last few years. This includes increased frequency of significant storms and increased rainfall events. We have to ensure we build our resilience, such as increasing the capacity of our stormwater networks, so that we are better placed to deal with those challenges.

Council has sought community feedback on the Long-Term Plan 2024-24 and held a series of submission hearings where people could share their views with Councilors. Details of this process and feedback received can be access here.

We acknowledge that current economic conditions are hard, and that any increase in rates will contribute to financial obligations of homeowners. Council has a rates remission policy for homeowners facing extreme hardship. Eligible households may get a reduction in their rates or be able to postpone payments. There’s also a government rates rebate scheme for low-income homeowners. Visit our website for more information on the support that is available. Help with your rates - Kāpiti Coast District Council (kapiticoast.govt.nz)

Vision Kāpiti ensures that Council meets its legislative requirement to not only plan for current residents but for future residents as well. It’s important that we grow and change overtime in a way that meets the needs of the community as a whole. Council is seeking to hear people’s aspirations in this first phase, and to follow up with delivery plan for the longer term to inform and shape choices about what we want to do, when and how, to ensure living in our district remains affordable. We will be looking at this more in the next phase of the project.

Thank you for your feedback on accessing the webinar.

We didn’t require registration for access to the webinar, however, Zoom requires attendees to log-in to the Zoom platform before they can access any online events that are hosted on their platform. Attendees who already had a Zoom account were able to access the webinar without any additional registration.

Thank you for the feedback about the Have Your Say page. While we want to make it as easy as possible for people to have their say on our work, we also want to make sure that the platform is secure and safe for those that use it.

The Kāpiti Have Your Say tool is operated by Granicus, a reputable provider of civic engagement tools trusted by over 5,500 government organizations worldwide. Granicus is committed to maintaining the highest standards of data security and privacy. You can review their comprehensive privacy policy here. In summary:

• Data Protection: Granicus applies strict security standards, controls, and processes to protect personal information from unauthorized access, loss, or accidental deletion.
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If you continue to experience any unusual messages or have specific concerns, please don't hesitate to let us know so we can investigate further and provide the necessary support. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Your feedback is crucial in helping us ensure a safe and secure experience for all users.

In short, yes. Through this Vision Kāpiti engagement process we’ve had more than 2,500 people provide direct feedback. We have been out at our libraries, online, and at Coastlands and train stations and attended events like the Kāpiti food fair, and our Community Boards have been at market days and held workshops locally to make sure the local perspective comes through clearly.

We’ve been really impressed with the level of engagement we have had on this project.

This part of the Vision Kāpiti work is looking at what our community’s aspirations are, but next we will be working on what it would take to do this, with a horizon out to 2060, so much longer than even our long term plan timeframes.

Through a second phase of work, we will test options for progressing changes with the community and set out what we could do along with cost over time. Our goal is to keep talking to the community about choices that could be considered to enable the aspirations that the community shares. We will come out the other end of this next phase with a ‘blueprint’, or a plan for what we need to do to make the Vision a reality, within the constraints we have.

Council has prioritised reducing debt through its Long-Term Plan, and set out a strong agenda to do so through its financial strategy.

Key elements of the financial strategy include:

• Everyday operating costs being fully funded from everyday operating revenue to ensure that a balanced budget and intergenerational equity is met.
• Capping staff levels at 436 for the next three years to stabilise fixed operating costs. 
• Capping the capital programme to between $70 and $100m through the 10-year period, so variable operating costs such as that depreciation and interest are managed within a reasonable range whilst ensuring appropriate asset management, renewal and planned new assets.
• Reducing net debt by $153 m (down to $262 m) by 30 June 2034.

Vision Kāpiti ensures that Council meets its legislative requirement to not only plan for current residents but for future residents as well. This is a great opportunity to provide input into how the district grows and changes, so that future residents (which may include our whanau, family, and grandchildren) are able thrive in our beautiful district.

We have been checking in with our advisory groups (for example Older People and Youth Council), our Community Boards have visited some of our schools and we have recently sought feedback at the Ki te Āpōpō Rangatahi event held by Te Wānanga o Raukawa. It will also be important to keep this conversation going over time to keep checking in that we are still heading in the right direction. We will be looking more at how we do this in the next phases.

We agree that we need to keep this process ‘live’ to keep checking in with our plans and with our community that we are heading in the right direction as things might change over time. Our next phase will outline how we do this over time in more detail but for completeness will include:

• Undertaking and releasing regular community profiles and ‘need assessments’ covering elements of ‘people, place, and partnership’ to ensure that we emphasise and focus on the things most important to our community over time.
• Developing a decade-based change focus, which integrates into a 50+ year ‘masterplan’, on the basis of feedback and votes from the community.
• Checking in annually and through our Long-Term Plan on our direction, to test and check priorities and any need to pivot or refocus as a result of contextual factors or changes in community need. 

We will be using the outputs of the Vision Kāpiti process to inform our next steps in this space, and we are increasingly looking at linking in with our partners across the district and in regional and central government to help deliver what is needed for our people. Our blueprint for change, which will be developed in Phase 2 of Vision Kāpiti, will include:

• Developing plans for the social infrastructure which is needed to support our community over time. This will include access to services such as medical, social, financial, childcare and youth related, food and other critical elements to support individuals and families to thrive.
• Developing plans for land use over time and the infrastructure such as roading and ‘waters’ that is needed to protect and maintain our environment, and to support individuals and families to thrive.

These are great questions, and the kinds of things that we are thinking about in our work every day. We don’t have enough space here to talk about all the work we are doing but here are some links that might be interesting to you:

• Our Financial Strategy
• Our work on Coastal Adaptation
• Our work on Housing 
• Our Growth Strategy, Te Tupu Pai
• Information on our population and demographics

Keep an eye on our website for more developments in 

these spaces as we build our outcomes framework and ways of working in the next phases of Vision Kāpiti as well!

We work with closely with our regional partners and the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office to plan and prepare for emergency events. There are a number of natural hazards in Kāpiti, including flood risk. 

Greater Wellington does carry out flood protection work in our district and has a Waikanae River Flood Management Plan in place, however it is likely that if we were to experience a weather event on the scale of the recent flooding in Wairoa that the protections may not be sufficient to protect houses from being inundated. That’s why we continue to invest in educating our communities about flood risk and in helping our communities to get prepared for floods.