“Two more of these in my life,” Wayne Brown half-joked when closing a long Auckland Council budget session after, once again, winning the day.
Brown’s exasperation came as his proposed budget for 2026-27, with a high 7.9 percent average residential rate increase for Aucklanders, saw off an 11th-hour challenge to lower the extra impost to 5.9 percent amid the fuel crisis and cost of living hardship.
Brown says the 7.9 figure has been in the council’s long-term plan since 2024 and even though circumstances have changed since the mideast war, it’s vital the council does what it says it is going to do.
The council apparatus itself faces fuel-linked costs of between $25m and $50m in the coming year and is going to find cuts elsewhere to cover them rather than borrow or otherwise risk its credit rating.
Doing what it says it is going to do means the council faces cutting its rate increases next year and the year after to just 3.5 percent, as per that long-term plan. If the Government pushes ahead with its planned rates cap law, next year could be the final one with flexibility for the council to levy ratepayers highly.
Sceptical councillors who opposed the 7.9 rise this year are already taking bets on Brown being unable to pull off the 3.5 percent target.
Councillor Mike Lee told his colleagues: “Anyone want to have a bet on whether the increase will be 3.5 next year? I’m happy to talk to you afterwards.”
The sense of fatalism was supported by Councillor Maurice Williamson. “Next year it won’t be 3.5. Mike Lee has a really safe bet on his hands.”
Lee says every council budget of late has been recast as facing an emergency, from Covid to flooding to now the City Rail Link trains imposing a $235m annual cost.
Williamson argues Auckland Council is continuing a pattern since its inception as the merged Super City in 2010 of accumulating rate increases vastly higher than the total of 39.1 percent inflation through the period, even taking into account population growth.
He urged a lower rate rise, but beyond that a recognition of how much the city is over-rating households and the need for a root-and-branch analysis of all that it does and spends.
Brown bristled at the doubts over his fiscal resolve, dismissing Williamson’s slides on cumulative inflation, rate rises and population growth as “just more showmanship.”
And he promised to achieve next year’s putative 3.5 percent rise.
“I guarantee we get 3.5 next year so long as we stick with the things we said we would do. I will be supporting what we promised in the long-term plan.”
The mayor admonished those who spoke in favour of cutting more this year from council expenditure and programmes.
“All those who sit around here … don’t make speeches to me about saving money.”
The deputy mayor, Desley Simpson, who said she’d have liked a lower rise this year but instead voted for the mayor’s 7.9 percent, told Brown she’d be watching him closely, holding him to his commitment to 3.5 percent next year.
“I’ll hold you to account… 3.5 next year and the year after. You promised that and you have to deliver.”
Brown: “As long as we do 7.9 this year and don’t [delay] depreciation and we don’t do things that are impossible.
“I promised the long-term plan, so, yes, I will. We’ll show you fellas.”
The commitment sets a tough ask for the long-term plan debates looming later this year for the 10 years from 2027, and if fuel costs and economic stagnation linger, will make the 2027/28 annual budget acutely difficult to limit to a 3.5 percent rise.
This year’s budget remains a gamble, with $86m in cuts yet to be determined, but just not as big a gamble as the last-ditch alternative debated through Tuesday’s six-hour meeting.
That one, moved by first-term councillors John Gillon and Bo Burns, wanted the smaller 5.9 percent rise but steeper cuts to spending from 11 areas of council expenditure – including some sacred cows.
The plan was to have officers identify cuts, deferrals or cancellations and for councillors to meet again to sign them off in time for the financial year end on June 30.
It added $60m to the already oppressive $106m savings included in Brown’s annual budget proposal – a package that itself has that $86m in yet-to-be-determined savings to be identified and actioned.
Advice from council staff was that delaying by a year its policy of fully funding depreciation, and setting an extreme target for spending cuts would simply put off the inevitable high rates increase until next year or beyond. That seemed to sway many in the majority.
After a long debate, with a disproportionate amount of it focusing on disputes over how late the alternative plan had been shared by the rebel faction with other councillors, the challenge came to nothing.
In the end, only a third of the councillors around the table went for the lower rate rise and much bigger cuts target, Brown winning the critical governing body vote 14-7.
But some of the rebels’ specified 11 areas of council spending might yet need to be attacked to find the Brown budget’s pass-and-hope programme. The measures include cutting major events funding of $7m, stopping an array of regional community grants, cutting use of consultants and ending the domestic food waste collections.
Some of the measures might now move to the bigger political and financial battle of the council’s long-term plan.
For now, Auckland’s average residential rate rise for the 2026/27 will be 7.9 percent .(Using the metric reported by the Department of Internal Affairs and other councils nationwide, Auckland Council’s average rates rise is 8.54 percent not 7.9 percent, when business and rural rates are also included).
Councillors were ultimately convinced the higher rate rise this year was the lesser of two evils.
But convincing the public is another matter, with that 7.9 percent figure being an average, and 43.3 percent of households due to pay more than that, some again into double figures.
Speaker after speaker highlighted how uniquely hard things were for Aucklanders right now and how the rates rise will hurt. But they seemed to argue short term pain now is better than a long-term disease for the city of a lowered credit rating, greater debt and interest costs and much higher catch-up rate demands.
“The struggle is real, absolutely,” said Councillor Lotu Fuli.
“I want people to know this vote has not been easy for me,” said Simpson. “I know people are doing it tough.”
“Aucklanders are experiencing something the like of which I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” offered Councillor Christine Fletcher. “I’ve never seen the sense of despondency that I’m seeing.”
“There are a lot of people out there across Auckland who are not going to be able to make these payments,” said Councillor John Watson.
Here’s how the governing body voted:
