Retirement Villages and Rest Homes
Retirement Villages and Resthomes
In 2025 it is very important who you vote for in the Local Elections.
Costs and Debt at the NPDC have increased significantly in recent years, and they are set to continue increasing significantly in coming years.
Do you want to risk losing your home, or your occupancy to lease, if you can’t afford increased costs with your rates ?
Do you want to live life to the full in coming years - and not be afraid of whether the funds you have will be enough to cover rapidly increasing costs ?
· We believe you need to vote for change, but you need to vote carefully.
· We think your friends and family also need to vote carefully this year too.
But – DON’T vote too EARLY.
We will have new information going on to our website, to help with voting, up until Early October.
- We will add more profiles about the Candidates over the next month on the Meet the Candidates page.
- We will have answers to a questionnaire we are sending to all Candidates. This should be on our website from late August.
- Videos will be online from 5 Events we are hosting, with questions we will ask the Candidates. These events run from mid August to late September.
- We will be offering tips on how to use the complicated NPDC voting system over the next 6 weeks.
- Keep coming back and having a look at the website as we gather and load new information
Make sure you check all this information before you vote.
How to find a majority of 8 Candidates across all the wards who will stop the constant spending
If we want change with decisions being made at the NPDC how do we find a majority of 8 Candidates across all the Wards who will say no to the constant spending ?
There are 15 Council seats up for grabs (including the Mayor), so across the 15 seats, and the 4 wards, we are trying to come up with 8 candidates who want to:
· Reduce Debt
· Pause/change activity in the current long term plan
· Make Infrastructure and Core Services a priority
· Stop current Rates and Debt doubling
· Review operational and staffing costs
· Review council systems and processes
· Consider a form of rates cap
And, we need a good mix of sound financial management experience.
Every voter DOES NOT need to vote for the 8 candidates – the candidates will come from across the 4 wards.
So how does everyone vote from where they live ?
| All Voters | 1 Mayor | |
| Kaitake Ward | 6 Candidates | + 5 District Wide Candidates |
| Inglewood Ward | 1 Candidate | + 5 District Wide Candidates |
| North Ward | 1 Candidate | + 5 District Wide Candidates |
| Maori Ward | 1 Candidate | + 5 District Wide Candidates |
It is so important to remember – only vote for people YOU TRUST WILL STOP the spending trend.
You DO NOT have to vote for 8 candidates to get 8 non spending candidates in across the whole city.
The people in Inglewood and the North Ward will vote for 2 people that the Kaitake ward voters won’t see. So only 5 other people are needed from Kaitake and District Wide – Plus the Mayor.
Kaitake Ward may find it easier to come up with more non spending candidates you trust from the 11 votes available – say 5 or 6 - PLUS the Mayor.
Kaitake, Inglewood and the North Ward may all manage to find the non spenders in the District Wide Ward – there may only be 2 or 3 of those.
But if everyone can spot the non spenders across all the wards we could piece together:
1 Mayor
1 North Ward
1 Inglewood Ward
2 - 3 District Wide Ward
4 – 5 in the Kaitake Ward
Do not forget with STV, if you vote for people you do not trust to stop spending, and the other people you do trust don’t meet the STV quota, the people you don’t trust will have your extra votes transferred to them.
ONLY Vote for the people you trust not to keep spending.
In the Inglewood and North Wards DO NOT be tempted to vote for extra people because you don’t think you have voted for enough to make up the 8 candidates.
Please just look for the non spenders in the District Wide Ward.
Some of the past spenders are telling you they won’t spend if you vote for them this time – but – they have a long list of new things they will now do if elected. Many of these new things will mean new spending
Hopefully we can all work together, and piece together, how we get a new majority of Councillors who will stop the plans to double our rates and debt in the next 9 years.
How to Vote with the STV Voting System
The STV Voting system is very complicated
Practice on a piece of paper before filling in your voting form
DO NOT tick the boxes
Write a number - Rank people in the order you want 1, 2, 3 etc
You don't have to put a number next to every name
Only vote for someone if you want them to be a Mayor or Councillor
If you vote for people you don't want, your votes for them can be transferred to other people on your list - so only vote for who you want.
Lots of people are asking us - Who Do I Vote For ?
As a member of the Taxpayers Union Ratepayer Alliance we can’t endorse or suggest any candidates.
But we can tell you what a good candidate looks like to the Alliance ?
They make many of the following types of statements:
• Debt is too high
• The amount of debt in the Long Term Plan is not sustainable
• It is not OK for debt and rates to double in 9 year’s time
• It is not OK for rates to be over 10% p.a (in double digits)
• Infrastructure and Core Services must be a priority
• Review the LTP – trim back or pause projects
• Review operational and staffing costs
• Review council systems and processes
• Will consider a form of rates cap
• Talk about keeping rates increases in line with inflation
• Have sound financial management experience
• They want to fix inefficiencies and wasteful spending
• Look at the top 3 skills the candidates have on our survey results – look for people skills, management, governance and financial ability
• They will have agreed to sign the Taxpayer Unions Candidate Pledge
Be careful of candidates who :
• Tell you they will focus on savings but have a long list of new things they will still spend on
• Tell you costs can’t be reduced at the NPDC
Meet the Candidates on our website here:
https://www.npratepayers.nz/page/657018
See our survey results here:
View the latest news
To learn more about issues we have been raising about the NPDC, read our past news stories here:
Meet the Candidates
Find out more about the Candidates who are standing in 2025 here:
Our Survey Results with answers to the important issues:
Find out more about the answers to the questions we asked all the candidates, and see which candidates didn't answer the survey