Annual Plan 2023/24 workshop recap

Last week we held our first Annual Plan 2023/24 workshop with elected members.

Annual plans are how we deliver our long-term plans. They identify our activities, the resources to deliver them and where the resources will come from – for example, from rates or user charges.

We’re proposing to stick to delivering year three of our Long term Plan 2021–41 without changes to our levels of service or strategic outcomes. Our operating environment, however, has changed dramatically over the last two years. The effects of inflation, higher interest costs and increased depreciation means that the rates revenue we forecast in 2021 for this year (year three) is now not enough to cover the work we have planned.

We’re not alone in this – local governments across the country are in the same boat, and many are proposing increases to rates as a result.

We presented some options for how we might bring this figure down, and elected members have given us direction to explore this further. Broadly, their feedback was on the need to limit additional financial pressure on our community without ‘kicking the can down the road’ in terms of the work that needs to be done.

Keep an eye on the Calendar of upcoming meetings for our next workshop.