I voted against raising the debt cap from $1.2 BILLION TO $1.6 Billion last year, but indications are that even that may not be enough in two years time if we don’t sell Aurora.
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Lee Vandervis 
An increase of a billion mightn’t look that much when politicians (at least in cental government) talk about tens of billions. But give a billion to an ordinary working person and you change their life. But -alas! – you also do the same when you take the money away from them – through rates and taxes - and charges, ‘user pays, levies, import duties and GST (which when charged on rates is a TAX ON A TAX.
The DCC ‘cap on expenditure’ is supposed to be a check on excessive and unaffordable council spending. But over the last twenty years, I have never known the DCC to vote to increase the cap limit and, then shortly after, borrow more money and eventually up to the cap limit. Then they just increase the cap limit again. A RUNAWAY TRAIN.
We have many older ratepayers on fixed incomes here who can’t afford to maintain homes they own (GST on all maintenance costs and OSH requirements for scaffolding/edge protection- which can cost as much as painting the roof.) Homeowners rarely apply for or get the central government accommodation supplement, like renters, partly because the paperwork is onerous. And the cost of living keeps going up. If you ae older or have a disability and can’t earn more than Super and have no other income, the chances of you keeping your family home are about NIL. So what you have to look forward to is to be poor, disabled and eventually homeless. Taxing property, not income, is indisputably contrary to natural justice because it does not take into account ability to pay. It forces the sale of the asset. But a home is not an asset like other assets. It is a necessity of life.
The DCC excuses its expenditure by claiming ‘this is what YOU (the people/submitters) asked for. Well, maybe a handful of them did, for example, those making submissions to the Annual Plans … but IMO these ‘community groups’ are asking for handouts, usually so better off Dunedin residents can swan about with leisure activities like organised sport and cultural activities like theatre and the arts and be subsidized by cash-strapped ratepayers who can’t afford to go to such amusements and have no leisure . A case of the poor subsidizing the rich. And the DCC councilors generally say yes to handouts to groups because they think democracy is a popularity contest. Yet the councillors have legal a responsibility for the PRUDENT financial management of the city. The excuse that DCC spending is on a par with other local bodied in NZ is fraudulent. Because they ALL spend far too much on trivia. Like RAINBOW PEDESTRIAN CROSSING to demonstrate their political correctness.