Mayor's Message
Council on 5 June 2025 adopted our Annual Plan 2025/26 including the budget, rates and fees for the year.
It is a pressured task with Council facing sharp increases in costs and ratepayers facing their own financial squeeze. Community organisations are getting more requests for support but less funding from other sources. We also have a core responsibility to maintain and improve our city’s infrastructure.
Council staff have noted that the approval was the smoothest and most problem-free of recent times and unanimously supported. There are diverse views around the Council table but also the goodwill to compromise. We are among the first of 78 councils nationally to do so. Many councils last year needed to get extensions of time as they struggled to get their budgets to balance or their elected members to agree.
Nelson City Council’s Annual Plan 2025/26 is largely in line with our Long Term Plan 2024-34. This was a deliberate choice that saved $140,000 in process costs. We had to find savings to offset a 20% increase in Council’s electricity costs and a new $290,000 Government levy to fund its water regulator. The slowdown in housing growth means we are getting less in development levies. We have delivered a balanced budget and debt at a little less than in the Long Term Plan.
The average rate increase is 6.5%, bringing total rates to $119 million. This compares with an increase last year of 8.2% (15.3% with the $300 storm recovery charge). The 6.5% average hike is lower than most councils including Tasman’s 8.9%.
Our top priority shifts from storm recovery in 2024/25 to city revitalisation in 2025/26. We are well advanced on the $90 million of work from the August ’22 storm and ahead of other councils hit by similar events at that time. This enables us to get on with key projects in the central city such as the $78 million Bridge to Better project and the $3.8 destination playground in Rutherford Park, for which we have secured 46% and 65% funding from Government.
The biggest investments are in infrastructure with $75 million provided for capital for water, wastewater, roads, footpaths and flood protection upgrades.
This Annual Plan navigates a balanced path of sufficient investment to help secure a prosperous future for our city while not so ambitious as to impose an unsustainable burden on current ratepayers.
