Strong Community Response to Council Services Review

Ruapehu District Council is pleased with the strong level of engagement to its services review surveys, with 4,055 individual survey responses received.

The surveys asked people about service levels across 11 separate activity areas, and whether each should continue as is, be delivered differently, be reduced, or stop altogether, to help keep rates down.

Mayor Weston Kirton said getting over 4,000 responses was a great result, and he thanked everyone who took part.

"This is the first time Council has reviewed every service we provide in this level of detail," he said.

“We asked some fundamental questions, including whether Council should be involved in certain activities at all and, if so, to what extent.”

As a separate survey was provided for each activity area, the response numbers give an indication of which service areas people feel most strongly about.

Community and recreational facilities - including reserves, halls, public toilets, swimming pools and trails - received the highest number of responses.

The next highest response was rubbish and recycling followed by libraries, communications, roading, environmental sustainability, tourism and visitor services, community and business development, economic development, youth development, and policy and strategy.

Mayor Kirton said the review was about working with communities to understand what services they value most, where they believe savings could be made, and what level of rates they are prepared to support.

With rising costs, the loss of water services income and significant local government reforms, we will not be able to continue providing every service at its current level within a future rates cap,” he said.

"We also recognise that rates are already too high for many people, and that water costs under the new water entity with Whanganui are forecast to increase significantly in coming years."

Council is now costing a range of service-level options, informed by community feedback and the trade-offs people said they would consider.

In October, Council will return to the community with these costed options to help confirm the final service levels to be included in the 2027–2037 Long-Term Plan.

"Our goal is to strike the right balance between keeping rates affordable and providing services that our communities genuinely value," Mayor Kirton said.

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