Councillors are attending a series of workshops this week to consider the level of changes to its services as part of the city's 2024-2034 long-term plan (File image). Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
Some Wellington City Council services may be scrapped in the next stage of its long-term plan as it faces tough financial times, a councillor says.
It comes a week after the council revealed it is facing a massive budget blow out to the town hall, which is expected to cost an additional $147 million, taking the total to $329m.
Councillors are attending a series of workshops this week to consider the level of changes to its services as part of the city's 2024-2034 long-term plan.
Councillor and Long Term Plan, Finance and Performance chairperson Rebecca Matthews said in any budget process the council would go through a series of trade-offs.
"There's not going to be deep cuts, we are instead going to be looking at how and when we do things to ensure it's affordable," Matthews said.
"There may be some projects but it's not about cutting something necessarily that people already have, it might be about a new thing, that we sort of think well maybe we can't afford that at this time."
The council could still deliver on its major projects, such as repairing the Town Hall and fixing the city's water infrastructure, Matthews said.
"That's kind of the framework we'll be using when we come to make those decisions, as we'll be looking at what's already underway, things that we have to do by legislation and structure what's not performing well," she said.
"We still have $350m a year to spend on capital expenditure, it's just about how we spend out money."
The council was not looking at job losses but was rephasing capital expenditure to make sure things were still affordable and wanted to ensure Wellingtonians were not negatively affected, Matthews said
"Climate change is an issue, transport and housing continue to be an issue, we still want to take all of those challenges on but we also need to balance that against the affordability both for rates and make sure that our rates increases aren't too high, but also that that council has enough debt available to it, in case we need it for a rainy day," Matthews said.
"A decade ago, we spent $128m on capital expenditure, compared with the $566m we are forecasting to spend this year. Any proposed rephasing of delivery will still ultimately mean we are investing in our city at consistent rates to previous LTPs."
A first iteration of a draft long-term plan budget will be created based off the feedback from councillors, which they will consider on 9 November.
Matthews anticipates the public will be able to have their say in April next year.
