Auckland Council's climate change plans hit by Covid-19 cash shortfall
Plans to replace Aucklands entire diesel bus fleet with zero-emission vehicles could be slashed, with councillors favouring a more modest budget plan due to the impacts of Covid-19. Mayor Phil Goff on Monday proposed an additional $15 million a year towards climate action, but it later emerged a more ambitious option was available in the update of the the city's next 10-year budget . The council has yet to decide whether Aucklanders will get to choose between the 40 cents-a-week climate action plan or a more ambitious 84 cents-a-week option. The climate change measures proposed by Goff cost the owner of an average value home $21 a year, while the bigger plan costs an extra 44 cents a week, or $44 a year. READ MORE: * Auckland Council budget: Ratepayers face 5 per cent one-off rates boost * Covid-19: Time for courage at Auckland Council's financial crossroads * Auckland congestion charge: City's next political hot potato is already baked Goffs favoured option is the smaller $15 million a year sum, while the alternative would fund $32 million annually. Council officials estimate the more ambitious plan would double the reduction in carbon emission to as much as 1,350,000 tonnes over a decade. The more costly plan would fund 1,500 zero emission buses instead of 600, and make the bus fleet emission-free by 2030, instead of just 40 per cent of the fleet being zero-emission. The bigger plan would fund the planting of 29,000 street trees, instead of 11,000, and treble spending on reducing the councils own carbon footprint by 50 per cent by 2030. Option Two (the bigger plan) will support all the actions in (the favoured) Option One, and allow council to significantly accelerate our climate action work programme in some areas, said the officials report. The councils Climate Action Plan has the ambitious goal of halving carbon emissions in the region by 2030, and having net-zero emissions by 2050. The two options are part of an update of the councils 10-year budget, which is being re-cast in the shadow of an expected $1 billion revenue hit over the next four years, due to Covid-19 impacts. Because of Covid-19 there are a whole lot of things we would otherwise have done but were unable to, and that includes climate change, Goff told a media briefing on Monday. We have included in this 10-Year Budget, priority for additional expenditure into climate change do we need to do more of course we do, we always have to, said Goff. That will have to ramp up, and will ramp up hopefully, as we achieve economic recovery from Covid-19. Chairman of the councils environment and climate change committee, Richard Hills, describe the proposed spending as a start. It gets us on a pathway, of course its not perfect, and we had to consider everyones finances at the moment, Hills told media. Its starting to deal with what we can contribute as a council, and the government is coming up with a bigger plan that we want to partner on, he told the briefing. Goff proposed a one-off rates hike of 5 per cent - higher than the pencilled-in 3.5 per cent rise - which will deliver an extra $25 million a year, and enable an extra $72 million of borrowing for infrastructure. The budget proposal has been formed with councillors, who on Tuesday were locked in a workshop refining it before next weeks Finance and Performance Committee debate. That meeting will decide what options and material will be put out for public consultation early in 2021.