Rural rates increases without any correlated benefits

Year on year PCC has increased rates by double digits for those who live in rural areas.

Rural rate payers do not have access to the services which cost PCC 55% of their spending of gathered rates. Rural household install and maintain their own water, wastewater and often roading. In addition, they also pay for their refuse collection and pay for additional rural postal services. If PCC continues to require higher payments for rural rate payers, they will simply make rural living untenable in Porirua. Effectively they pay twice for every service. once through rates to PCC (which provides for the city as a whole) and again for the provision of those services to their own homes.

Many people living in rural areas in Porirua do not earn money from their land commercially. Porirua enjoys a mixture rural areas and developed land, which creates a good balance for those who enjoy being in less densely populated areas. Increasing rates on rural households year on year makes living in those areas increasingly unaffordable. Cost of living has affected every income. Those living in our rural areas are often small to medium business owners and are the people who have also been impacted by higher rates and operating costs for their livelihoods.

Rural rate payers who can demonstrate that they pay for their own water collection and waste systems should be entitled to a discount on their rates. It is simply not fair to make them pay more than the average house hold and not get even get the same level of services in return for those rates.