Let me give a shout out to Christchurch City Councillor Melanie Coker, who has told her council colleagues that what they are doing by not paying-off debt to keep the rates rise this year lower and then stinging us with an even bigger increase next year, is misleading.  

That’s how she’s describing this smoke and mirrors way councillors are trimming-back this year’s rates increase with one thing in mind - getting votes. 

She says the council is showing “poor leadership, poor financial management and is misleading the public”. And she’s bang on.   

They’re being short-sighted. Reckless. And if any of the ones who voted for this try to tell you over the next few months that you should vote for them because they’ve done everything they can to keep rates and down and they’ll do everything they can to keep them down again if you vote for them, call them out on these shenanigans. Because that’s what it is.  

Which is being generous. Councillor Coker puts it better, when she says it’s misleading. In fact, that’s being generous too, because what it really is, is a sham.     

I’m not going to get bogged down in numbers because that’s not what this is primarily about.   

When it comes down to it, this is about councillors trying to protect their backsides and get re-elected when the local body elections happen later in the year.  

But we need a few numbers  for context.   

So the council was proposing a 9.93% increase. It was going to put that out for public consultation yesterday.  

But, at the last minute, councillor Sam Macdonald cooked up this idea that they could pay-off less debt and get the increase down to 7.5%.  

And what do you think happened? Enough of them around that council table thought “ooh, that’s a good idea. That’s a much easier sell when I’m out trying to get re-elected later in the year.”  

So when it went to the vote, that’s what they decided.  

It was close, though. Nine voted in favour of it —including mayor Phil Mauger— and eight were against it.

Which is going to mean several things. The increase this year will be lower but, at this point it looks like next year’s increase will be over 10 percent%.  

What’s more, it’s going to contribute to the council’s books being in worse shape than they were going to be by $12 million.  

Before yesterday, the budget was going to be unbalanced by $48 million. This smoke and mirrors stuff is part of the reason why the council’s books will be unbalanced by $60 million.  

Going by the report I’ve read, councillor Kelly Barber takes the cake - saying this yesterday: "At the moment, our ratepayers are suffering. Next year is another year. Let’s deal with the problem of next year, next year.”   

In that one statement, councillor Barber demonstrated perfectly the problem with politicians in this country. Central government. Local government. They’re all the same. All they care about is the next election.  

And by saying “let’s deal with the problem of next year, next year”, Kelly Barber has shown us that all he cares about is getting another three years around the council table.  

And when it comes to dealing with “next year, next year” and that rates increase is looking like being more than 10 percent, and the council’s books are even more out of whack, it won’t matter, because the election will be history. 

Deputy Mayor Pauline Cotter’s another one.  

She says reducing rates artificially instead of paying off debt makes her uncomfortable, but "this is a good year to be easing financial pressure on people”. And she’s hopeful the economy will improve next year.  

But is that really the approach to take when you’re overseeing a $1.5 billion annual budget? Hoping things will get better.  

Of course it’s not.  

It seems that in an election year, it’s perfectly fine to not cut costs. It's perfectly fine to pay-off less debt. It's perfectly fine to kick high rates increases for touch and worry about them next year. It’s also perfectly fine to put the books $12 million more in the red than they would have been.  

It’s perfectly fine - if you’re trying to win votes.