Southern Squall

You will have to pay more to park in central Invercargill, there’ll be more chance that you’ll get a parking fine, and you’ll have to walk a little further to get to a toilet in Queens Park to help the city council cut its proposed rates increase.

There’s also a good chance that you’ll have to leave the Splash Palace swimming pool an hour earlier on public holidays (or not go at all on Good Friday) and you’ll have to wait at least another year for some decent money to be spent on the Stalinist Wachner Place.

At least, this is what looks likely after councillors this afternoon accepted a raft of staff-proposed budget cuts to slash the proposed rates increase from 8.08% to about 5.3%. They started with a proposed strike of $42.068m, and had saved about $1m by the meeting’s end.

Those savings included:

Cut rates: The Invercargill City Council

* increasing parking fines revenue by $20k, and getting another $110k by increasing parking charges by 20c

* fixing up a few accounting errors, including a $369k omission

* making another $5000 by charging more for burials

* delaying a $50k spend on Wachner Place by one year

* slashing $50k by not installing security cameras and swipe card access at the Clifton wastwater treatment plant (it appears at least one contractor with a key to the gate has been disposing waste on the sly)

* knocking-back a $120k spend on a new toilet for the north-end of Queens Park

* delaying a $52k upgrade of Bluff Camp

* deferring a $20k spend on security cameras in public areas at Splash Palace for another year

* accepting a management proposal to cut $10k from the proposed museum salary budget

* leaving for another year a $100k spend on footpath renewal

But it wasn’t all slash and burn in a meeting characterised by good-natured banter and back-slapping.

The chief executive’s professional development budget was also boosted by $25k.

Southland Football might get $150k for an all-weather surface at Turnbull Thomson Park, and Number 10 Youth Stop might also get a $25k grant to keep it operating out of its council-owned building on Deveron St.

We say might, because all these proposals still have to survive the annual plan public consultation process. Even so, councillors were obviously relieved that they and staff had managed to cut a proposed budget they were all uncomfortable with.

That’s not to say they accepted all the proposals which, if adopted as they were, would have cut the rates increase to 4.69%. Builders were spared fees increases and a proposal not to spend $145K relining the city’s cast-iron water network were spiritedly dispatched.

A $32k resource management legal fees reserve was cut even after councillors Jackie Kruger and Darren Ludlow worried the council might struggle to meet all challenges to its RMA decisions.

But the soon-to-be controversial parking enforcement improvements stayed put as Cr Geoff Peircy bemoaned getting a ticket while on council business, just a fortnight after the Squall saw Cr Ludlow’s car ticketed on Esk St.