Summary of decisions from Mackenzie District Council meeting 7 April 2026

9 April 2026

In recent weeks Councillors have worked through a line-by-line review of the budgets in a series of workshops. They were clear from the outset that the Annual Plan for the 2026/27 financial year be as streamlined as possible. They wanted reductions made across all budgets and funds sourced from reserves where they could be.

A key message from Councillors was the budget should focus on ‘must haves’ not ‘nice to haves’.

Some of the decisions are listed here. The agenda with the full explanations is available online at: https://docspublished.com.au/mackenzie

Councillors decided to:

• Reduce the opening hours at the Twizel Resource Recovery Park by 2 hours per day and reduce the operating budget by $30,000.
• Reinstate user-pays to the toilets situated at the footbridge in Takapō / Tekapo to enable user-pays toilet revenue targets to be more likely achieved (potential $25,000 gross revenue).
• Increased the contribution from the Forestry reserve from $300,000 signaled in the LTP, by adding an additional $500,000 to make the total dividend used to offset rates to $800,000, with the $500,000 to be applied to roading/transportation (with the effect of offsetting some of the roading reserve deficit balance).
• The budget for employee costs to reduce to take account of a 2% vacancy factor to reduce the overall wages and salary budget by $168,480.
• The schedule of fees and charges to are increased to provide for inflation of 3.1% where applicable, noting that there is no impact to the rates requirement but also no additional charge to rates.
• Increase the fees charged for LIM and PIM information to bring them into alignment with neighbouring district charges.
• Introduce new charges for pre-application time required for the planning team in excess of 30 minutes in each case, with standard hourly rates to apply.
• Reduce the tourism marketing budget by $30,000 from $196,500 to $166,500 with staff to allocate the reduction across budget lines as appropriate;.
• Decrease the Economic Development costs for contracted services from the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce by $10,000.
• Transfer $138,274 from the operations management budget to the water activity, to account for the vacant Water Manager position, with the cost being recovered from Water Charges instead of general rates.
• Increase the facilities management budget from $25,000 to $41,000 for completion of the Reserve Management Plans (RMP’s) and to fund that full budget of $41,000 from the Lake Alexandrina reserve instead of rates.
• Fund the $77,000 budget for trails maintenance, planned maintenance and river maintenance from the Lake Alexandrina reserve instead of rates.
• Remove the $30,000 project budget allocated to each of the three community boards’ budgets for projects.
• Remove fees and charges for the use of the Fairlie Village green, noting that any maintenance, upkeep or re-instatement costs will sit with ratepayers.
• Reduce the budget for cleaning services for Fairlie and Twizel Buildings by $25,000 in total, noting that there will be some reduction in the level of service.
• Remove the Community Development operational funding allocation of $45,000 .
• Remove the community grants funding of $60,000.
• Remove the contribution towards a feasibility study for a Twizel community hub of $30,000.
• Increase the funding of depreciation of Roading Assets from the current 20% to 30% in the Roading budget.
• Agree to advertising the replacement positions:
  • Governance and executive support
  • Health and Safety Business Partner
  • Finance Support Officer
  • Customer Services officer
• Align MDC’s excess water use processes with Timaru District Council, allocating a quota of 600m3 per year and invoicing for extra ordinary water use only, rather than invoicing all water users.
• Reduce the budget for Peace Tree maintenance from $120,000 to $50,000 which will reduce related revenue from NZTA by $20,000.
• Reduce the Twizel tree planting budget from $40,000 to $0.
• Reduce the rural tree planting budget from $10,000 to $0.
• Reduce Council donation budget within corporate and governance by $15,000, down to $5,000.
• In view of the requirement for a CEO review in 2026/27, increase the consultancy budget in corporate and governance from $7500 to $20,000.
• Remove the budget for Water Zone Committees by deleting $32,000 of expenditure and the associated external revenue of $24,000.