Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is fighting to preserve his 7.9 percent residential rates rise as councillors express disquiet at hitting households so hard in tough economic times.
Some of the 20 councillors are mulling a move at Tuesday’s budget committee to try to lower the level of increase, with suggestions ranging from borrowing to cover current costs, lifting public transport fares, steeper cuts within the council organisation and consideration of deferring depreciation.
However Brown and council officers warn that some of those measures could threaten the council’s financial reputation and credit rating, or just put off higher rates rises until future years.
After an at-times tense workshop debate for councillors on Brown’s final draft of the 2026/27 budget, the mayor argued again that the 7.9 percent increase was attributable to looming costs of the new City Rail Link train services and stations.
“What we’re doing this year is fantastic. We’re going to come out at nought, plus a train.
“We’ve got to pay for $235m. We’ve got no percent plus a train, which is pretty good.”
Challenged by one councillor, Mike Lee, over blaming the rise only on the CRL, Brown dismissed him: “Shut up, you fool.”
He then suggested one option for cost savings could be to stop subsidising evening Gold Card ferry fares for pensioners to Waiheke Island. Lee, who is above retirement age, lives on that island.
Told by Lee to “walk the talk”, Brown said: “I’m happy with 7.9, mate. That’s very good … that’s what we promised.
“We promised 7.9, we’re delivering 7.9 at a time when everything is bloody hard. I’m proud. It’s defendable. It’s a very good result at a time when other councils are having to do the same and they don’t have a new train set.”
Suggesting some around the table might have been “spooked” by the Taxpayers Union, he told councillors talk of cutting the increase slightly was “tokenistic”.
“Coming down a little bit does not make the public suddenly wealthy.”
But even his deputy mayor, Desley Simpson, who chairs the value for money committee and has overseen emergency council budget cuts in the past, said: “It’s the first time I’ve been as concerned as I am.”
Because of the cost of living pain facing Aucklanders because of the Middle East war, “I’d sit in the camp where I’d like to see some give from us”.
Simpson wondered if the budget’s annual target of $106m in savings within the council could be increased by $10m or $15m, say, if councillors allowed the chief executive flexibility over where to apply reductions.
The chief executive, Phil Wilson, said that might be doable if the level of savings baked into the draft budget was not so high already.
He gave a hypothetical example that if the councillors wanted a $50m cut to be taken, for example, from staff costs, he’d need to let 500 staff go.
Councillor Maurice Williamson suggested public transport fares could be increased, John Gillon said he was open to covering some of this year’s costs via debt and to a limited delay to budgeting for depreciation, and Mike Lee argued something had to give in terms of the council’s own systemic problem with costs, particularly in procurement.
Williamson: “I don’t think we can sit on the highest rate increase ever, at a time when inflation is only 3.1 percent because the public is struggling like stink to cover their costs of living and pay their way and so on.” He pushed for “something, even a marginal gesture of a change.”
Wilson, referring to the possibility of adding to debt to cover operating costs, warned of risks. “We’ve got to be careful. We’ve promoted a narrative we do not borrow for operating costs. It’s only for investment in the future. We start to shoot ourselves in the foot.”
The Franklin ward councillor Andy Baker said he was comfortable with the 7.9 percent increase. “I’d love to see it less .. but I think we need to be careful. I’d really like people to be able to explain what exactly they are going to cut … because we think it’s really important to drop it 1 percent.”
“If we get a rates cap next year,” he said, referring to a Government plan to limit council’s future increases, “what are we going to do then?”
He asked if somewhere within the council an alternative proposal, rumoured to target a 5.9 percent rate increase, was being considered. Committee chair Greg Sayers did not know of such a plan and no one around the committee table confirmed they were nutting out that proposed solution.
But Sayers asked if any councillor was planning such an amendment that they ran their plan through the finance department for robust analysis before it was presented.
Lee told Newsroom on Sunday night: “I believe there’s a strong possibility that moves will be made to try to reduce that [the 7.9 percent residential rates rise]. Whether it succeeds of not is another question.
“A significant number of councillors are hearing what the public are saying and understand that, given the hard economic times.
“The increase is so egregious in relation to that that councillors are getting the message that this is just a bit too much, and I think there will be some pushback.”
Lee said he “fortunately” hadn’t heard Brown label him a fool. “That’s the sort of stuff we have to put up with if you’re trying to do your job seriously. For some reason he takes it personally. None of my comments were made in any way personally in regard to him.”
In past years, small groups of councillors have tried last-minute revisions to mayoral budgets but been overwhelmed by advice from officials that there were no alternatives without significant risks.
- (Using the metric reported by the Department of Internal Affairs and other councils nationwide, Auckland Council’s average rates rise is 8.54% not 7.9%, when business and rural rates are also included).
