Future is Clearer for Urban and Rural Halls

The next step has been taken in making the district’s community halls operate more efficiently.
Tonight (TUESDAY) the Policy Committee confirmed its recommendations to the Council, which largely follow the indicative preferred options announced last October.
These include selling the Council’s five rural halls to their management committees, establishing monthly usage targets for rural and urban halls, and increasing revenue through greater hall usage.

In addition the committee recommended:

Removing the Urenui Community Centre from the rural hall scheme and leasing the community hall portion of the building to the Urenui Community Centre Committee, through a concessional lease.
Reducing the usage targets from 100 hours to 70 hours a month for urban halls, and from 40 hours to 30 hours a month for rural halls.
Including casual bookings as well as bookings from regular users in the urban and rural halls’ usage targets.

The Council will consider the recommendations at its meeting on 2 March.

Manager Parks Mark Bruhn says the recommendations strike a balance between the amount of ratepayers’ money that goes into subsidising the Council’s community halls, and making sure these facilities remain available for use.
“The user groups and the various communities place great value in their halls, and they’ve given us a good level of feedback on our indicative proposals,” says Mr Bruhn.

“The new recommendation for the Urenui Community Hall Committee is the same type of lease that we have with the Oakura Board Riders Club.

“At the end of the day this review is about getting the best use out of our rural and urban halls while managing the overall cost of maintaining them.”
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The recommendations are to:

Remove the Urenui Community Centre from the rural hall scheme and lease the community hall portion of the building to the Urenui Community Centre Committee, through a concessional lease.
Sell the remaining five rural halls so they can be owned and operated by independent groups. These five are Lepperton, Mangorei War Memorial, Tikorangi, Uruti and Waitoitoi halls.
Establish a usage target for urban halls of 70 hours per month (to be assessed in three years time). The current average is 73 hours per month.
Establish a usage target for rural halls of 30 hours per month.
Adopt the amended Rural Halls Funding Policy (including the criterion that priority for funding be given to halls that meet the usage target).
Increase revenue through usage (noting that fees will also have to rise to meet the 20 per cent user funding target).
Adopt the proposed Community Halls Policy which sets out criteria for development, redevelopment and divestment of community halls.
Continue the Rural Halls Funding Scheme, and inflation-adjust it from 2010/11.

This year the Council has budgeted to spend $600,000 on all community halls for maintenance, depreciation and grant funding.

NPDC’s Revenue and Financing Policy is for 20 per cent of the total cost of urban halls to come from user fees, but currently only 10 per cent is being covered. The rest is met from rates.

NPDC funds its rural halls 100 per cent from rates as it receives no income from them.
Urban halls are located in urban centres and managed by NPDC or custodians, while rural halls are located outside an urban centre and managed by private hall committees and societies.

There are a further 16 rural halls in the district that are independently owned.