Public consultation and actions for Hamilton City’s Long-Term Plan
CityWatch NZ encourages people who live in Hamilton City or own property in Hamilton City to get involved with this current public consultation.
For those who live in Hamilton City or own property in Hamilton City, this week is critical in terms of getting involved in the current public consultation.
With Hamilton City Council planning on increasing rates by 19.9% before next year, doubling rates bills by 2030, increasing Council debt by another billion dollars before 2030, and cutting more services, it is important that more people get involved with the Long-Term Plan consultation process.
If you have an opinion on how the Council is running the City or will be impacted by their plans, send a message to Council as part of this consultation process.
The written and online part of the consultation closes this Sunday the 21st of April 2024. Whether you have time to send in two lines or two pages for the consultation, it is important that your views are recorded.
There is also opportunity to verbally address Council about the Long-term plan on 15-17 May 2024. We recommend that as many people as able also inform Council that they want to verbally address the plan during that phase of the consultation process.
Use the link below to complete the written phase of the public consultation on the website. https://haveyoursay.hamilton.govt.nz/communications/2024-34-ltp/
CityWatch NZ will keep updating the following page with details of the consultation process and related articles posted on CityWatch NZ.
Consultation finishes on 21 April 2024 for the Hamilton City Council Long-term Plan 2024-2034
CityWatch NZ was also informed of this petition to oppose Hamilton City Council’s rates increases and growing debt. The petition requests an independent assessment of Council’s plan due to the plan exposing “the city to unacceptable economic and financial risk”.
Petition to stop rates increases and growing debt at Hamilton City Council
If you oppose the rates increases and growing Council debt, add your name to the petition and inform others in Hamilton about the petition.
Links for sharing the petition below…
https://www.change.org/p/stop-hamilton-city-council-rate-increases
For the Hamilton Long-term Plan, CityWatch NZ is posting a number of articles and opinion pieces. These range from short guides through to in-depth analysis of Council finances. Often these will scrutinise and challenge the carefully-crafted narratives used in Council’s publications. We will be posting more articles over the next few days to CityWatchNZ.org , these are the first two posts…
Long-Term Plan consultation guide
OPINION: Why is Hamilton City Council unable to prepare and promise a financial budget that works?
What about the Long-Term Plan consultations for councils outside of Hamilton City?
We are aware that other Council’s are going through their Long-term Plan consultation processes this year with drastic rates increase, large debts, and water service reforms being common across New Zealand.
Currently being a volunteer operation, CityWatch NZ does not have the resources or people to cover every council in New Zealand. If you want us to post information related your council and your community’s responses, send us an email at content@citywatchnz.org and we will see what we can do. If you can email us potential content with good links to key documents and relevant webpages, in a format similar to what is already on CityWatchNZ.org, that will cut down on our editing work and help us post more timely content.
We note that there is another similar petition on change.org which is opposing Upper Hutt Council’s proposed rate increases of 20% each year for the next 3 years.
Upper Hutt Council’s Long-term plan consultation details can be found at https://letskorero.upperhuttcity.com/ltp with their written/online consultation ending on 2 May 2024.
Share and re-post links to the petitions if you support them.
Share links to Long-term Plan consultations and encourage people to send feedback in before the public consultations close.