Special rate gets year's extension

The Albany business improvement district scheme has been extended for another year.

North Shore City Council's decision extends until June 2011 the collection of the $310,000 annual targeted rate for business and property owners within the North Harbour Industrial Estate, with a re-ballot to be held early in 2012.

The special levy, collected on top of normal council rates, is funnelled back to the area through the North Harbour Business Association to fund specific projects and programmes.

Introduced in July 2008, the scheme was for an initial period of three years and a re-poll of businesses in the area was to be taken in early next year.

Association general manager Gary Holmes says the legislation setting up the new Auckland Council provides for existing rates to be collected until July 1, 2012.

"It means that even if we had gone ahead with the re-poll, regardless of the result, the targeted rate will continue to be collected and this is something set in concrete because it is provided for in the legislation," he says.

Property owners opposing the scheme are disappointed by the council's decision.

"I believed the councillors and its officers have been trying to manoeuvre this outcome by some method or other for some time," says Albany Industrial and Commercial Property Owners Association spokesman Fred Collie.

"The fact that this decision was taken under confidence when clearly there is no commercial or council sensitivity here, only a political one, made sure that we won't be given the chance to counter this outcome."

Mr Collie says the use of the Auckland legislation is a "very creative use of a piece of legislation which I don't believe foresaw this particular situation. While the legislation does stop councils introducing targeted rates, I believe the intent was new targeted rates which this one clearly is not," he says.

Mr Collie says the legal opinion relied upon by the council came from the law firm Kensington Swan and not from the Internal Affairs Department.

He asked for a copy of the document but was told by council that "correspondence between the council and its legal advisers is classed as legally privileged" and may be withheld under the Official Information and Meetings Act.

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