Standard & Poors have lowered the Tauranga City Council's credit rating.
Declining confidence in the Council after its well-publicised governance issues is behind the move.
The rating has been lowered one notch from AA- to A+.
This is what Standard & Poors said:
Tauranga City Council's (Tauranga) financial management has weakened, in our view. Political and governance issues have beset the council recently and have resulted in the central government (the Crown) deciding to appoint commissioners in February 2021.
Tauranga's large capital program and lower-than-previously budgeted rate increases will lead to very large deficits and rising debt levels. This partially reflects the council's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are lowering our issuer credit ratings on Tauranga to 'A+/A-1' from 'AA-/A-1+'.
The outlook is stable. Though Tauranga's budgetary performance will remain weak, we expect the crown commissioners to stabilise the council's credit metrics.
15 Comments
Just in 2021? This country has had underinvestment in infrastructure, industry and productivity since the 1990s and yet we delude ourselves into thinking we pay huge amounts of tax.
Maybe we proportionally do now since wages and tax brackets have remained stagnant, but in reality the current tax take is now insufficient to maintain assets built 50 years ago and but enough to pay for the boomers’ healthcare & national super.
Using our capital to invest in productive industries instead of selling houses to each other would also help.
‘’Tauranga's large capital program and lower-than-previously budgeted rate increases will lead to very large deficits and rising debt levels.’’
This is just appallingly governance, née caping income at the same time on a going on a capital spending spree.
Councillors get elected by saying they are going to hold rate increases and send the council to the wall. Hope commissioner stay in place for a very long time, fellow rate payers be prepared for significance rate increases and don’t moan about.
Plenty of NZ govt partly subsidies entities, such as local councils, universities usually rampant with incompetent practices, after working awhile inside - we realized those incompetent's was on purpose.. for preferential misappropriation of funds, collective/personal/mutual beneficial 'share cut' of activities project funding etc.
The most effective deterrent? usually an annual/regular/random, independent audit say by Audit NZ.
Most of those that often arguing with the regular audit prepositions.. usually have a vested interest in place.
The cashflow from the current building booms development levies, consent fees etc must help surely, if a council can't spin a profit in a construction boom when else can they? Once the assets are in place and don't need any attention perhaps?
The cities layout around a harbour and tributaries does however present a high overhead with sprawling, low density suburbs all needing bridges and interchanges, not to mention power and water connections, pump stations etc
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