The average household pays about $321 more this year, after a councillors’ push to cut the increase to 5.9 per cent was beaten
Howick ratepayers are paying 7.9 per cent more from this month after Auckland Council adopted its 2026/27 Annual Plan and struck the largest rates increase in the Super City’s history.
Mayor Wayne Brown was unsparing about the argument that got it there.
“Thank goodness for that, this one’s been beaten to death,” Brown said of the debate.
“This is what we proposed and what a majority of the public and local boards agreed on two years ago: a zero rates rise, plus a train set.”
“An Infometrics report for the last financial year showed that relative to incomes, Auckland was the most rates affordable city in New Zealand,” Brown said.
“I don’t want to end up back where it was when I took office, with crumbling pipes around the city leaking,” he said.
Brown’s point is that the entire increase is the City Rail Link, which adds $235 million a year in ownership and operating costs to the Council’s budget as the project nears completion.
Not everyone at the table accepted the framing.
North Shore councillor John Gillon put up a late amendment to wind the rise back to 5.9 per cent, funded by lifting the Council’s savings target from $106 million to $166 million.
“I think 7.9% is too high when you consider the cost increases everywhere at the moment, and lots of households are really struggling,” Gillon told the New Zealand Herald.
Waitemata and Gulf councillor Mike Lee, who backed the amendment, said the figure was “over the top and unacceptable given the state of the economy and ratepayers being squeezed by the cost of living”.
Lee said the Council had not moved a dollar from its draft despite the consultation it ran in February and March, calling that “pretty insulting”.
The amendment was defeated and the mayor’s budget passed.
For the average value residential property, annual rates go from $4055 to $4378, a rise of about $321 a year or $6.16 a week.
The Council estimates about 94 per cent of unchanged residential properties will land within one percentage point of the 7.9 per cent average, and that no unchanged property will rise by more than 10 per cent.
The Council said it had navigated a $213 million budget risk that could have triggered a 15 per cent rise, and that its $106 million savings target is larger than the entire rates revenue of 54 other councils.
Brown said he would not defer costs or underfund depreciation as some other councils had, and that “sensible heads around the council table have prevailed”.
The rise lands as the Government prepares to cap council rates rises at 2 to 4 per cent from January 2027, a policy Brown has attacked.
“Putting a cap on rates isn’t going to solve anything,” he said.
“It will just defer it for a couple of years then ratepayers will be paying even more.”
Council chief executive Phil Wilson said the organisation was conscious of what households were carrying.
“We are very mindful of the cost-of-living challenges our community is facing and, therefore, delivering increased value is an absolute priority in the next 12 months and beyond,” Wilson said.
Watercare is separately lifting water bills by 7.2 per cent from July.
For east Auckland, the rise sits alongside a squeeze on the Howick Local Board’s own budget, which chair Bruce Kendall has said covers only about half of what is needed to maintain the Board’s existing assets.
The plan took effect on 1 July, with full documents due to be published during July at aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/annualplan.
