Non-profits groups could face new council charges

Local boards will be able to charge non-profit community groups, that lease Auckland Council facilities, a maintenance charge of up to $10,000 a year if a proposal in the 2023/24 Budget is approved.

Council wants to amend its Community Occupancy Guidelines to give local boards more discretion in recovering maintenance and administration costs, and the chance to supplement their funding.

At present, maintenance fee guidelines are $250 for a building of less than 100 square metres, $500 for buildings between 100 and 500 square metres and $1000 for those larger than 500 square metres.

Those figures would rise to $2500, $5000 and $10,000 respectively if the Budget proposals go through.
In addition, the current administration fee guideline of $1 per year for any sized building and ground leases would rise to $1300.

The budget supporting information document says the increased revenue could provide an alternative source of funding for maintenance and administration costs that are currently funded by general rates.

“The freed-up general rates funding would be available to those local boards who had raised their fees.

This would provide them with additional revenue to supplement their local funding and manage any impact on their budgets resulting from the proposed reductions to local funding being considered as part of this budget,” the document says.

“If the local boards were to seek to recover the maintenance and administration costs to the level proposed, they could generate up to a maximum of $3.5 million additional revenue. If all fees were set at this level, they would recover 74% of building maintenance and repairs and 95% of administration costs.”

However, the document stresses that all of this would still be down to each local board and that any or all increases would be determined by them on a case-by-case basis. There will also be no penalty if they decide not to impose the increased charges.

“Local boards will continue to have full discretion when charging fees set out in the amended Community Occupancy Guidelines.

“If a local board decides not to raise the fees from the current baseline amount charged, there will be no requirement to top up community lease revenue budgets for charging below the proposed fees.”

The document adds that maintenance and administration costs are only part of the cost Council incurs to support community leases and a separate review is presently underway into how community leases should be managed, “including the appropriate recovery of costs”.