Dean Jacqui: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16607. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki):I rise to speak on the Tasman District Council (Validation and Recovery of Certain Rates) Bill. The Local Government and Environment Committee gave this local bill in the name of Damien O’Connor pretty good consideration in its time at the committee. The committee listened very carefully to a number of submitters who were affected by this bill. It was really sympathetic to the submissions of the people who cared enough to put a lot of time in to coming to Wellington or perhaps giving us a videoconference in support of this bill or indeed in opposition to the bill.There was the desire to delete clause 9. We decided that this would be outside the scope of the bill so the technical amendments were made for consistency to clauses 5(a) 6 and 9 to replace “declared to have been” with “declared to be and to always have been”. Without validation of this setting of the rates the council would be required to undergo a good deal of work that was retrospective in nature around things like determining which ratepayers had actually paid the 2006-07 rates and the amount they had paid. That time 2006-07 was 8 years ago. It was a long time ago in the council’s record and also in the ratepayers’ records. Of course they are not required to keep those records for that long. The council would also have to ascertain whether the current ratepayers were the same ratepayers who occupied those properties in 2006-07 and that is a nightmare in itself.It is something we did consider. The council would be required to apportion rates if there are or were multiple owners of properties. Again the nature of ownership of properties can change substantially over time. Then the council would have to write to each ratepayer advising them of the amount of the refund and requesting bank details for repayment. So it was decided by the committee under the leadership of Nicky Wagner who I know is waiting to take a call—Scott Simpson: A very good chair.JACQUI DEAN: Actually Nicky is an excellent chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee and she runs a very collegial environment in the committee which enables the committee to discuss some quite thorny issues. I am happy to say that on this particular one the committee was pretty united in its care for this bill. The committee also determined that any merit of setting a stormwater rate was we decided outside the scope of the bill and that that is a matter that the local authority would have to deal with separately.In essence this bill is about validating certain rates that were set incorrectly during the period of 2003-04 and 2008-09. The Tasman District Council is not alone in having made a mistake of this nature—not exactly the same perhaps. But this kind of critical decision-making by its very nature is critical because if it is not set correctly then we are faced with a retrospective validation bill like this and Parliament I believe is not of the mind to really support this kind of bill. It is a situation that has been brought to us on behalf of the local council and its community so we have got to deal with it. So we are dealing with it.Maggie Barry: Yeah.JACQUI DEAN: Well where does the buck stop you know? The council has been charged with some important decision-making. It has made errors in that so it falls to Parliament to correct them. Damien O’Connor has done a very good job in keeping the lines of communication open between the council its ratepayers and the committee under the chairmanship of Nicky Wagner.Without doing the validation the council will always be vulnerable to challenge from ratepayers over their incorrectly set rates. If it were me—I am a ratepayer—and my rates were incorrectly set I would be ropeable about it. I would be ropeable about it because every 3 years I do vote for my councillors who then select a mayor and I would like to think that they run a pretty tight ship. I would like to say that this Government’s Better Local Government reforms have a very strong push towards enhancing the decision-making capability of councils. I would also like to say that Local Government New Zealand and the Society of Local Government Managers share that desire. I am sure that the Committee would agree that we do not need too many more of these bills but having said that I believe that we have got this one in pretty good shape and I commend it to the Committee.