Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

Last week I showed how Tauranga City Council is planning to invest more than $4 billion in hard infrastructure projects during the next 30 years for more housing and employment areas.

This just includes roads, water and parks infrastructure and excludes what developers build themselves.

The city has a ‘growth pays for growth' philosophy. In reality, it's more of an ambition than a rule.

If anything keeps me awake at night, it's the risks of council making billion-dollar investments to accommodate the city's growing population, reaching 200,000 people by 2060.

If this infrastructure cannot be repaid from growth contributions, which part of the building consent impact fees, the debt then becomes ratepayers' debt.

More than $20 million of growth-related debt has defaulted onto the ratepayers since the mid-2000s.

For example, council builds a road based on how many people we think will live in the area in the future.

If more houses are built in the area than we thought, the ratepayers need to retrospectively fund the upgrades to the road.

If fewer houses are built in the area than what we thought, the ratepayers take on the debt that was supposed to be repaid by the new dwellings.

So there's a lot of weight resting on the shoulders of councillors and our small growth planning team to accurately plan where we're going to fit our new residents.

Tauranga City Council has three blunt funding sources: rates on properties, user pays charges and limited government grants.

I urge the Government to empower communities with more workable financial tools if we're serious about tackling NZ's housing issues.

Otherwise, the next generation will be faced with a double burden of community debt as well as compromised infrastructure because earlier generations didn't have the financial tools to build what was needed.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 0276989548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.