Community Plan 2009-2019

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Section 1: Guide to the Plan

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Welcome to New Plymouth District Council's 2009-2019 Long-Term Council Community Plan, from now on referred to as the Community Plan.

Under the Local Government Act 2002, New Plymouth District Council is required to produce a Community Plan every three years covering the next 10 years. The first three years of the Community Plan are outlined in detail, with the following seven years outlined in general terms.

This Community Plan seeks to reflect what type of community the people of New Plymouth District would like to live in, and the things they would like to see made available for their community.

How the Draft Community Plan was developed

We began working on the Draft Community Plan in May 2008, by gathering your views on what was important to the community. Preliminary planning involved the community in a series of surveys and community road shows. Through this comprehensive programme of going out to the community and hearing what you had to say, we shaped the formulation of the Draft Community Plan. This went out for consultation on 30 March. On receipt of submissions the council held public hearings and deliberated on all the information received. The council then approved all the amendments to be made on the 2009-2019 Community Plan on 29 June.

What you can expect from the 2009-2019 Community Plan

Sections one through ten provide an overall summary of the Council's proposals, detailed information on the Council's plans and detailed accounting information while the remaining sections (11 through to 14) contain copies of the Council's significant policies and statements.

Community well-beings and strategic direction

New Plymouth District Council delivers its services to ensure the cultural, economic, environmental and social well-beings of the community are met. The district has identified its Community Outcomes, outlined in section three of this plan, and the Council has devised its strategies to meet these outcomes on behalf of the community. The strategic intent for the district is set out at the front of this plan. The following shows how these components link together.

Community well-beings > Community Outcomes > Strategy > Rational for Activities > Levels of Service > Performance Targets > Performance Measures.

(Adapted from Developing Levels of Service & Performance Measures - creating customer value from community assets - 2007v2 - NAMS Group)Return to top

Connecting plans and strategies

The Community Plan and Community Outcomes relate to other key Council plans, documents, policies and processes and are mainly driven by legislation and the powers and obligations that legislation gives to local authorities. The Community Outcomes guide both long-term planning and day-to-day decision-making for the Council. Surrounding all of this is community consultation, as anything the Council does needs to be in step with, and reflect the preferences of, the community.

Diagram showing how consultation and plans and strategies are linked together.

Thanks for Shaping Our Future

The Community Plan needs to be a plan owned by the community. We want to take the opportunity to thank the community for becoming involved in shaping our future over the next ten years. In preparing the 2009-2019 Community Plan we tried to reflect the aspirations gathered from earlier consultations and address the key themes. Through our wide ranging pre-consultation we gathered views from more than 1,400 people and organisations throughout the district. Preliminary planning involved the community in a series of surveys and community road shows. Through this comprehensive programme of going out to the community and hearing what you had to say, we shaped the Draft 2009-2019 Community Plan.

Consultation feedback ‘Shaping Our Future’ was available here on our website, at the Civic Centre, Liardet St, New Plymouth and libraries and service centres.

Some of the themes emerging from the preliminary consultation were: Shape our future logo.

Safe communities.
A sustainable environment.
Roads and transport.
Economic growth.

You asked us to maintain the district as a vibrant place to live and work and you asked us to keep providing services in our parks, water, stormwater and roading activities, while still providing a range of recreation and cultural activities for everyone to enjoy.

The production of the Draft Community Plan outlined future projects , budgets, refuse collection options and several budget savings to be considered. The Draft Community Plan was then made available to the public and the consultation period began on 30 March 2009. We received a number of submissions, phone calls, and emails with many members of the community utilising our website to put their submissions on line. The community also engaged in the talk-back facility on the website which allowed the community to ask questions and clarify what was in the plan.

The 2009-2019 Community Plan is now finalised. In preparing the plan we have tried to reflect your aspirations. You asked us to maintain the district as a vibrant place to live and work and you asked us to keep providing services in our parks, water, stormwater and roading activities, while still providing a range of recreation and cultural activities for everyone to enjoy.

We have prepared this plan recognising that we are in a difficult economic climate. The impact on the district is, as yet, unknown but we already know the global consequences of the downturn will affect us in different ways. The plan has been developed to reflect how the district can weather the current recession so that we are in the best possible situation to take advantage of the economic upturn when it occurs.

The government has indicated a number of reforms to current legislation that it intends to review. The Resource Management Act is changing, and further changes to the Building Act and the Local Government Act may also occur. This 2009-2019 Community Plan does not try to anticipate what changes will occur and any impact will be properly analysed and, if necessary, amendments to this plan made at the appropriate time.

We have taken a responsible fiscal approach while preparing this plan and have tried to ensure residents and ratepayers receive maximum value from their Council at minimum cost. Given the current economic downturn we have placed great emphasis on being prudent, while trying to maintain the standards of service and facilities our community has grown to expect.

In approaching our proposed spending priorities we critically reviewed all our existing operating expenditure and revenue based on the existing levels of service being maintained. We reviewed our funding levels for depreciation and loans and made substantial savings and/or reductions in order to minimise the financial impact of our starting point for the 2009-2019 financial strategy. We achieved efficiency savings on procurement, reduced internal costs and made savings within new projects being developed. This amounted to $569,000 of savings.

We reviewed the proposed 10-year plan and removed or deferred some new projects. We then reviewed the list of new projects left on the plan and established what was absolutely necessary and matched this with what you said to us was important in the consultation stage. We also critically reviewed how we funded our programmes and revised our assumptions on inflation and interest rates in order to reduce our costs. We trimmed the list of projects down and reduced our proposed new project expenditure by $50 million and limited the number of new projects going forward.

We received 565 submissions on the Draft 2009-2019 Community Plan and 81 people or organisations presented their submissions to the Council. During the deliberations the Council carefully considered the services and budgets in the plan and the feedback received from the community throughout the process before deciding on the amendments to be made. The following plan includes all the amendments agreed by the Council in the 2009-2019 Community Plan.

There were several proposals which we included in the Draft Community Plan for the community to consider. The following budget savings are confirmed and are included in this plan:

Closure of the library service in Puke Ariki’s South Wing on public holidays, saving $30,000.
Reduction of the Festival of the Lights budget by $50,000.

Other changes included in the final plan are as follows:

A review of all levels of service (the services provided by the council and to what standard) in 2009/10, the results of which will have a significant effect on the budget figures in future years.
An additional $313,000 of income in the Customer and Regulatory Services budget, due to the downturn in the building and land use areas being less than expected.
Investigating a Urenui/Onaero sewerage scheme has been pushed out another three years, to start in 2012/13.
Not continuing with the extension of the Urenui sea wall, but instead monitoring it and reconsidering the matter as part of the Draft 2012-2022 Community Plan.
Reducing the budget for upgrading the festive streetlights to $30,000 per year, and halving the budget for upgrading the Festival of Lights light features over the 10-year period.
Community pools in Okato, Waitara and Inglewood will stay open for the full season rather than having their seasons reduced by two weeks.
Reinstating $60,000 of the $100,000 (which had been removed in the draft plan) from the parks budget.
Reinstating $50,000 per year (which had been removed in the draft plan) for the Art in Public Places Trust from year three of the Community Plan (2011/12).
Investigating further support for the Taranaki Arts Festival Trust.
Increasing the Marae Grants budget from $52,500 per year to $82,500.

The Community Plan does not signal significant changes in our strategic direction. The Council will continue to deliver its services based on the levels of service outlined in the council activity pages of this plan.

Future projects
We listed some of the new major projects in the Draft Community Plan. These projects are in addition to the day-to-day operations of the Council. The future projects listed proposed to continue works on water, wastewater, stormwater, solid waste and refuse collection, roads and parks with limited new projects going forward in recreation and events and cultural services.

Other changes made to the 2009-2019 Community Plan include:

Deferring the Waitara to New Plymouth sewer pipeline.
Addressing safety issues at the Linda Street tennis courts in Oakura within existing budgets.
Bringing forward the Waitara Walkway from West Quay to Marine Park from 2018/19 to 2015/16.
Investigating the creation of two pedestrian crossings on Devon Street.

New projects included in the 2009-2019 Community Plan:

Providing $250,000 in year four (2012/13) for the proposed Community Services Centre.
Providing $100,000 for a skate bowl at East End Skate Park providing the skateboarders secure $60,000 from external funding for the project.
Providing $700,000 in 2015/16 for the development of the Waitara River Path.
Providing $60,000 seed funding for the creation of an eco show-home.
Providing $50,000 for two mobile crime prevention cameras.
Providing $200,000 per year in 2010/11 and 2011/12 for the cycling velodrome in Hickford Park, Bell Block, provided the organisers raise the balance of funding required.
Some of the community requested the removal of the raised thresholds (speed humps) throughout New Plymouth’s CBD. The council resolved to remove the temporary smoothing treatments on Devon Street’s traffic thresholds (at a cost of $10,000), instead of making the smoother profiles permanent (at a cost of $200,000).
Upgrading the footpath on the east side of Brougham Street from Devon Street West to Huatoki Lane - $1,000,000.
Increasing the road widening/lengthening rural improvements budget to $171,300 per year.

All major projects are now listed in the Funded Projects section of this Community Plan.

Refuse collection

The Council resolved after extensive public consultation to not alter or extend its current levels of service for refuse collection (from those in place in 2008/09).

The Council also resolved to retain the current bag system across the existing collection area for the next four years, but with the excess bag sticker price increased to $2.50 per bag.

Funding

Depreciation and loans

We have reviewed our funding levels for depreciation and loans and made substantial savings and/or deferrals in order to minimise the financial impact for the 2009-2019 financial strategy.

The Council has also decided not to fund loan principal repayments on sewerage and solid waste loans for the three years from 2009/10. Principal repayments will recommence in 2012/13 at a higher level to maintain the 25-year loan terms. Apart from the loan principal deferral noted above, the Community Plan has been prepared on a basis consistent with current key financial strategies. This is further explained in the financial assumptions section and balancing the budget section.

Targeted rates

The Council charges targeted rates in the form of uniform (flat rate) annual charges. These are currently for the recovery of the cost of providing water, wastewater and refuse collection/disposal/recycling charges for households in serviced areas and some other property uses. The Council is also introducing one new targeted roading rate for the roading activity to increase the transparency between the benefit the service delivers and the allocation of costs. This was formerly expressed as part of your general rates. A new uniform annual roading charge of $112.50 is included in the 2009-2019 Community Plan.