Viewpoint – Rodney not neglected

Many hours lately have been spent putting together the 10 year budget. I have heard many times that all the money goes to the CBD and that nothing is being done for Rodney. Of course there is always room for improvement and anyone who listens to me during Committee meetings can hear me lobbying for more money to be allocated to our ward, but we are not really being neglected.

At last May’s budget committee, I managed to get an additional $1 million for Auckland Transport’s Rodney seal extension programme. Not enough, but something. We also have a plan to increase this substantially in the next round.

The Long Term Plan includes about $50 million expenditure around Warkworth including $6.4 million for the showgrounds, which of course includes the new multi sports complex, $9.2 million for the Warkworth water bore treatment plant, to name two projects.

In addition Watercare will be upgrading many water and wastewater plants around the ward – Helensville $8 million, Omaha $7 million, Snells Algies $20 million, Kumeu Huapai Riverhead $38 million, to name a few. These upgrades would have been difficult to undertake under the Rodney Council.

As well as this capital expenditure, funding goes towards operational expenditure. Around $20 million in the last year for running and maintaining libraries plus halls, community centres, tourism, community development, arts and culture, maintaining parks $12.5 million; maintaining/repairing roads; and $123,000 for environmental projects including dealing with graffiti and vandalism plus the cost of the Local Board and governance issues. Our Local Board gets $1 million of discretionary funding over and above this.

Less than half of Council’s income comes from rates. The rest of our funding comes from various fees consents, building permits, dog registration. We also get a return on assets and properties such as the airport shares and the Ports of Auckland. Council owns a lot of property and has plans to maximise the investment through partnerships with the private sector with returns coming back to Council. All these things take time though.

At the time of writing this, we are finalising the next 10 years budget which should see local boards getting more money and Auckland Transport extra ongoing road sealing funding. Along with our new Empowering Communities project, which basically means going back to what we used to do in the past resourcing communities to do their own thing, we should see a vast improvement in delivery of services in Rodney.