Council facing funding blackhole
Queenstown's deputy mayor Quentin Smith says local ratepayers simply can't keep footing the bill for growth-related infrastructure in New Zealand's tourism capital.
Smith has spoken out after National Party leader Christopher Luxon came to town last week to announce plans to boost tourism to aid the country's economic recovery, but also ruled out any local visitor levy.
Luxon, if elected next month, plans to make changes to the immigration system, including removing the median wage requirement and fast-tracking applications, to encourage potentially "tens of thousands" of workers to come to NZ.
Up Skyline on Thursday, he also announced a host of other measures aimed at increasing tourist numbers into the regions.
But, asked directly about whether the National supports a bed tax, or visitor levy, Luxon dismissed the plans.
"Look, the reality for us, in a cost of living crisis, that is not the right answer for New Zealand at this point in time," he says.
Neither was an increase in the $35 International Visitor Levy the answer, although he said he would like to see the existing funds raised from it applied better.
Smith says the policies are disappointing.
"The visitor levy, particularly, was one that has been worked on for a long time in this district to help our residents to reduce the cost of living by getting tourists to pay a bit more of the infrastructure share," Smith says.
"In making the announcement they referred to not wanting to increase the cost of living, but I think they missed the point."
Luxon says National will work directly with councils with high visitor numbers but low ratepayer bases, through a proposed National Infrastructure Agency.
Smith says council are open to finding out more about that but understands the models are about providing additional borrowing capacity and cheap loans.
"And that just doesn't help us because we're already struggling to service the debt we have, and we already access a range of different measures from the Housing Infrastructure Fund, from the Infrastructure Acceleration Funds. There's all sorts of things that we're already using."
Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) has included revenue from a proposed visitor levy in its 10 year plan.
"Obviously, that's increasingly unlikely," Smith says, "so it does leave a hole and equally, the potential for changing timelines and issues around the three waters reform also has an impact on us.
"We are required to account for the fact that in two years time, we could hand off all our three waters debt . . . if that doesn't eventuate then we also have a funding problem there. Not being able to offload that debt puts us in a very difficult position."
Luxon was challenged by media on what increased migration might mean for Queenstown Lakes housing availability, where workers are already sleeping in cars.
He says National will increase the land available for housing by asking every council in the country to consent 30 years of housing growth.
Smith says QLDC has already done that through the Spatial Plan and other work.
"We've got enough residential land for all the projected growth models over the next 30 years . . . so once again, they seem to be missing the point around what the issue is for our district.
"Firstly, it's the cost of housing, and secondly, it's cost of infrastructure. We just cannot afford to keep up with the cost of implementing growth-related infrastructure."
National would also pay councils $25k for every consent above the five-year average, while enabling private capital to flow into build-to-rent schemes and housing trusts.
Aiming to boost visitor numbers was a bit "tone deaf", Smith adds.
"They really seem to be heading down the route of wanting to just supercharge more visitors and growth back into our district. And we know through the work of DQ and the destination management plan, that's really not where the industry now in our district is headed right now."
