Your Rates Explained

In order to calculate the rates required for a year, council first calculates our required expenditure to perform all of our activities. These activities include services such as water, wastewater, democracy services, roading, libraries etc. Once Total Expenditure is known we then calculate the rates funds required by deducting any other income sources (e.g fees and charges or subsidies etc ) from this figure. The rate types available to collected these funds are Targeted, Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC) and General Rates. We allocate different activity costs to different rate types, these rate types are then applied to an individual rates account.

Council’s services are grouped into different activities. Water, Wastewater and Refuse and Recycling Collection are activities where a service is directly applicable to a property and funded by what is known as a targeted rate. A targeted rate is a fixed amount per property and is applied to a property directly receiving a service or where a service is available to that property. The example below shows the calculation of the residential refuse and recycling collection rate.

The same process is followed to calculate the targeted rates for Water and Wastewater.

Where an activity is deemed to apply across the entire district or creates benefits available to all ratepayers in the district, such as the Library, Parks and Council administration, the costs are allocated to rates in two ways. Firstly, via a UAGC which covers a portion of the costs for some activities and is a charge that is the same for every property. This is to ensure that each property contributes a minimum amount towards district wide activities. The income generated by a UAGC rate is capped by legislation and must not make up more that 30% of the general rate revenue.

A UAGC is calculated in much the same as the targeted rates, except the rate covers multiple activities. The total rate funds collected from the UAGC for all activities are added together then divided by the total number of properties receiving the charge. For the 2025/2026 year the rate funds required to be collected from the UAGC is $6,052,300, there are 8,024 rateable properties in the district giving a UAGC of $754.27 ($867.42 incl GST) ($6,052,300/8,024).

The remaining portion of rates funds not covered in any of the above situations is collected via a land value based general rate. Land Value differentials are divided into five categories with all categories, except the Farming Forestry Zone, having three zones that properties are split into. (A map of the rating zones is available in Council’s Long Term Plan). Zone One is roughly greater Greymouth, Zone Two is the area outside Zone One but still reasonably populated, and finally Zone Three is from the boundary of Zone Two to the District boundary. The Purpose of the zones is to enable the remaining activity costs to be allocated on a more balanced basis across the district: for example Zone One and Two would contribute more towards stormwater costs than those in Zone Three as they may not have direct access to the service, or the benefit gained from the activity is lower than that of a property in Zone One.

Each activity is allocated to a Council Function and the costs of each activity group are then allocated on a percentage basis across each zone as per the below table.