District Promotion to continue

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 628, 19 March 1996, Page 1

District Promotion to continue

Funding for the Ruapehu District Council's District Promotion policy is to remain unchanged for the current financial year. This was the decision made by the Council's funding committee at last Tuesday's meeting in Taumarunui to consider the options they had before them in an attempt to alleviate to the problems associated with the decision in 1991/92 to fund a marketing and promotion facility throughout the Ruapehu District by applying a levy on all rateable properties zoned or used for commercial and industrial purposes. One of the options involveddefming a policy test which would identify more . accurately which rateable

properties should be levied with or exempted from contributing to the District Promotion Rate. This would ensure that all rateable properties meeting the criteria of the policy test would, in fact, have the District Promotion Rate applied. However, this option was deemed administratively complex and expensive and would take some time to complete. In addition it could be found that after applying such a test that there might be a small number of such properties and that any additional revenue that might be generated by a more rigorous application of the policy test would be insignificant. Another factor to

consider was the time consuming and expensive administrative costs associated with any challenges which might result from a questioning Of the criteria applied. A second option considered by the funding committee was to remove the District Promotion Rate altogether as a single rate and fund all marketing and promotion activity form the General Rate thereby making all ratepayers contributors. The third option was for Council to leave the existing District Promotion Rate policy unchanged for the time being and this is what the funding committee decided to recommend.