Report from General Meeting. 15th April 2026.
Baptist Church Centre, Fergusson Drive, Upper Hutt,
commencing at 1:30pm.

Guide to Discussions

Objectives:

• To clarify for members and others within our community the actual extent and seriousness of increasing costs of local government impacting on low to middle income households in Upper Hutt.
• To declare that while ‘local Government rates and charges’ are only one element of an economically unsustainable ‘cost of living’ crisis, as the largest ‘non discretionary’ cost centre, they require immediate government intervention to ensure ‘public good’ provision for growth and infrastructural security is no longer funded by unfair, inequitable and unrealistic ‘user charges’.
• To encourage householders to recognise that this last quarter (April, May and June) of annual local government rates and charges billings, it is imperative they voice to Tiaki Wai (the new water supply organisation), local councils and parliamentary representatives their dissatisfaction with the Water Supply Pricing Policy which will be implemented on 1st July 2026.

Clarifying Local Government Rates and Charges 2026-2027.

We are disappointed Council chose to avoid full public consultation with its community and proceeded to arbitrarily adopt Annual Plan 2026-2027.

The implied financial impact on low-income households arising from the implementation of Water Reforms deserved transparent and accurate consideration of ‘affordability for householders’ as a fundamental obligation to those users who, only now, are enlightened they are ‘unfairly and inequitably’ required to accept user-charges of unsustainable proportion.

Council is seemingly unwilling to engage with its community on the Water Reforms pricing. Last year it belatedly installed a ‘Rates Calculator’ on its website enabling property owners to easily determine the impact of UHCC rates inclusive of water charges combined with GWRG rates. This year no such clarification is provided. By default it has been left to Grey Power and N Z Empowered another hard working commentator to endeavour to communicate the bad news.

To better convey the seriousness of our concerns we have calculated the local government rates and charges to be imposed on the 1st July 2026 on the more vulnerable of our local households e.g. a single pensioner, living alone, without supplementary income from KiwiSaver, in a modest property = (CV $550,000).

Billing Agency	Rates/Charges (per year) 2026-2027	Rates/Charges (per week) 2026-2027	N Z Superannuation (per week)	% Household Income
UHCC	$1596.28	$30.70
GWRC	$816.74	$15.71
TiakiWai	$1940.09	$37.31
Total	$4,353.11	$83.72	$555.15	15.08%

N.B.
In the 1980’s the sufficiency of N Z Superannuation as an adequate allowance permitting a single recipient to participate with dignity in their community was determined as a nominal 43% of average earnings.

The 2007 ‘Local Government Rates Inquiry’ led by David Shand, established that the sectors Rates and Charges were stable at ‘around 3% of average household incomes.

We argue, therefore, “a review of the adequacy of New Zealand Superannuation is clearly overdue in the presence of increased ‘costs of living’ of the this magnitude” and “that a present level of 16.08% of nominal household income, single persons reliant on basic N Z Superannuation in Upper Hutt cannot possibly meet their obligation to pay Local Government Rates and Charges.”

The scenario chosen to illustrate the seriousness of the present ‘cost of living’ crisis is a particularly conservative one. Many other pensioners and even other low-income householders in properties valued closer to the city’s average capital values, face a significantly worse imbalance between available income and minimal expenditure budgets.

Lew Rohloff
Vice President

Contact address:
lew.rohloff14@gmail.com

This article was released to Grey Power’s membership as a background paper for discussion at their 15th April meeting.

A “thank you” to Lew Rohloff for sending this article to The Upper Hutt Connection.

21/04/26