Gore District Council finished the 2025/26 financial year $2.8 million better off than it budgeted, but a new survey shows fewer than a quarter of residents are satisfied with the decisions it makes.
The council's annual results summary, reported this week, shows a deficit of $2.543 million against a budgeted loss of $5.339 million. The improvement came mainly from deferred project spending and savings on consultants.
Total expenditure was $43.9 million against a planned $46.6 million. Operating expenses were $2.7 million under budget, including about $1.5 million saved on contractors and consultants after delays to the council's migration to a new IT platform.
The summary was on the agenda for Tuesday's full council meeting but was not discussed by councillors.
Satisfaction slides
The council's 2026 residents' survey, which drew 386 responses and has yet to be formally tabled, found just 23 per cent of respondents were satisfied with council decisions and actions. That is down from 27 per cent at the previous survey and well short of the council's own target of 80 per cent.
Spending and rates were the top concerns, followed by roading, water, wastewater and stormwater, and footpaths.
Mayor Ben Bell said he "didn't realise that was the score".
Years of rates pressure
The result lands in a district that has been through several bruising years on rates. Ratepayers absorbed a 21.4 per cent increase in 2024, and the council's long-term plan deliberations in early 2025 canvassed options for the following year ranging from 9.9 per cent to 24.25 per cent, with chief executive Debbie Lascelles warning in a report that the council was "not out of the woods yet". The 2026/27 annual plan was eventually adopted with an average rise of 10.83 per cent.
The council is now consulting on a wider review of how rates are shared between residential, rural, commercial, industrial and utility properties, with submissions open until 18 November. Modelling in that proposal shows rural ratepayers facing increases of 18 per cent under one option and 28 per cent under another, and councillors have been pressing for public meetings in rural communities.
The better-than-budget deficit reflects spending that was deferred rather than avoided. Capital projects pushed back from one year typically reappear in the next, which means the headline improvement does little to ease the longer-term pressure on rates that residents told the survey worried them most.
For a council that has set itself a satisfaction target of 80 per cent, a score of 23 per cent, down on the last survey, is the number most likely to follow councillors into the rates review hearings in December.
