Rates Review: Non-Contiguous Rating Units

Rural landowners whose land isn’t all in one land parcel or right next to each other, right now can receive a remission on annual uniform charges. Council is looking to remove that remission to save ratepayers picking up extra costs. Let’s draw a new boundary around this issue together.

Up until now Council has given some rates relief to rural landowners whose properties are situated across non-contiguous titles - meaning they aren’t adjacent, touching, or sharing a border.

These landowners receive relief in the form of remission on uniform charges for their noncontiguous land, which does apply to those properties which are contiguous or where the land owned is all in one piece.

There are some provisos to get the relief. To qualify owner/s must own all the land, use it together, and have just one house on the whole property. Plus, it must be in our rural areas.

Right now there are about 173 properties in the Tararua District that fit this bill, each with varying distances between their titles. The discount equates to $263,203 and that has been divvied up among other ratepayers in their General Rates.

What's happening now?

Council has been providing help that is beyond what is required by law by giving this discount and so we think it’s time for a change.

There are a few ways we could handle this. Setting limits on the distance between properties or only giving discounts to properties in town. But those plans are a bit tricky to manage so, like many other councils, the preference is to remove this relief for non-contiguous properties and we want your input to make sure we are all on the same page.

Here are the options:

• Option One: No change
• Option Two (our preferred option): Remove the remission for non-contiguous properties.

More information on the options can be found in the document below.