Following the public consultation and the LTP hearings and deliberations, Councillors agreed to several changes to the budget which saw a few changes in the rates increases over the 10 year period.
A rate increase of 12.95 percent in year one, and an average increase of 8.75 percent over 10 years was the final outcome.
Each of our activities expenditures are vastly different to deliver and fluctuate from year to year as things like infrastructure needs upgrading or replacing.
What does the capital expenditure look like?
Over the 10 years of the Plan there are large priority infrastructure investments planned, achieving increased levels of service and maintaining and renewing capital programmes. Most of these are in public transport, flood protection and water supply activities. In order to achieve this, the capital expenditure (including our investment in Greater Wellington Rail) has increased from our previous LTP average of $105M per annum to an average of $135M per annum in this LTP. This has been carefully set to factor in deliverability of our programmes.
Last year, Greater Wellington deliberately delayed and slowed the capital expenditure programme in response to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Alert Level lockdowns. Outside of last year Greater Wellington has a reasonable to strong history of delivering our capital expenditure programme.
Our capital expenditure programme for 2021-31 has been phased to ensure it is deliverable. We acknowledge that there are some risks to our ability to deliver our capital expenditure programme which are outside of our control, like contractor availability and supply of materials.
External partner contributions to projects and funding contributions also remain a risk. We manage these risks through maintaining
good relationships and project planning, accountability and reporting. If we do not achieve our capital expenditure programme, this has
the potential to impact the level of service we provide to our ratepayers, our ability to meet the demands of a growing region and reduce our carbon footprint.
There is significant capital expenditure projected in years 1-4 and year 6 of the Long Term Plan, to be financed through external borrowings and crown funding. This graph shows our proposed capital expenditure and borrowings profile.
Paying for these activities
We fund activities through a range of sources. The rates you pay contribute to funding all the activities that Greater Wellington operates and all the levels of service provided, however, rates are only one source of funds. The others are:
- Water levies
- Government subsidies
- External revenue**
- Investment income
**External Revenue = Fees and charges such as public transport fares, consenting fees.
How our activities are funded
Our funding mix over the Long Term Plan period is shown below. The way in which activities are funded is set out in our Revenue and Financing Policy.
