You may have received a letter or email about a proposed change to the rating areas for river rates. If adopted, this would take effect from 1 July 2024.

We set our River Rates as a per dollar of capital value for X and Y, and on land value for Z rating areas, on a differential basis. This means that all properties in the district pay a river rate, but some pay at a different rate than others. We have defined three levels of benefit:

• Ratepayers in the “X River Rating Area”- these ratepayers are deemed to directly benefit from flood protection infrastructure and river management work and so contribute a higher rate per dollar of their property’s capital value.
• Ratepayers in the “Y River Rating Area”- these ratepayers are deemed to receive benefit from river erosion control infrastructure or river management work and so contribute a higher rate per dollar of their property’s capital value.
• All other ratepayers of properties pay the “Z River Rating Area” – these ratepayers contribute less per dollar of their property’s land value.

The River Rates are used by Council to undertake a range of surveillance, maintenance, repair, and restoration projects along our rivers. These works are most often in response to severe weather events that cause erosion damage to river-side properties. Council staff also monitor and administer gravel excavation activities in key rivers with the goal of maintaining an acceptable average bed level to both limit over-excavation and encourage removal in areas where significant gravel has accumulated.

To fund this work, Council has established the targeted rating system above and that is partially based on a “user-pay” philosophy, where half of the total river activity budget is sourced from properties adjacent to our actively maintained major rivers, known as River X and River Y areas. The remaining half of the activity budget is levied from the district as a whole and applied both to major projects in maintained rivers and to subsidies for private river control work along smaller rivers and streams; these are known as River Z activities. Council also receives some revenue for river activities from rental of river berm lands, gravel extraction royalties, and cost-sharing with private landowners for River Z work.