A Targeted Rate to Fund Amateur and Community Sport in Tāmaki Makaurau

SUBMISSION TO THE GOVERNING BODY AND COMMUNITY COMMITTEE

A targeted rate to fund amateur and community sport in Tāmaki Makaurau

Replacing a dying vice tax with a lawful, hypothecated, high-return public instrument, before the rates lid and the sinking lid close the window.

To

Auckland Council Governing Body; Community Committee; Mayor and Councillors; Local Boards (for information)

From

Ratepayer submission on amateur and community sport funding

Date

5 September 2026

Purpose

Seek a decision to develop and consult on a region-wide targeted rate for amateur sport facilities, access and participation, for inclusion in the next Long-term Plan cycle.

Legal base

Local Government Act 2002; Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 s16-s17 and s21; Auckland Council Revenue and Financing Policy; Funding Impact Statement; Gambling Act 2003 venue policy.

1. What this paper asks Council to do

This is not a request for another grant round. Grant rounds already exist. They sit on general rates, they can be cut in a bad year, and they are not a substitute for a statutory funding instrument. This paper asks Council to use a power it already has.

Direct staff to model two options for an Amateur and Community Sport Targeted Rate: (a) a fixed charge per separately used or inhabited part (SUIP) and (b) a rate in the dollar of capital value, including incidence by ward, interaction with the section 21 30 percent uniform charge cap, and GST treatment.

Amend the Revenue and Financing Policy so that community sport and active recreation facilities (non-council assets), regional operating support for community-access facilities, and participation-access measures are expressly funded in part by a targeted rate.

Identify the activity group in the Funding Impact Statement so a targeted rate can be struck lawfully under section 16 of the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002.

Consult on the rate as part of the 2027-2037 Long-term Plan (or a material LTP amendment), not as an Annual Plan surprise.

Ringfence proceeds to a defined programme that uses the existing Tāmaki Makaurau Sport and Recreation Facility Priority Plan and the Sport and Recreation Facilities Investment Fund (SRFIF) framework (approximately 70 percent priority or targeted projects, 30 percent contestable), with co-funding rules and an access and inclusion condition on every capital cheque.

Treat Class 4 gambling grants and alcohol sponsorship as declining third-party income to be replaced, not as a permanent pillar of the city’s participation system.

The decision in one sentence

Auckland will pay for amateur sport either as a cheap, hypothecated, co-funded network of club and trust assets, or later as a more expensive residue of inactivity, idle young people, thinner neighbourhoods, and council-owned sheds built too late.

2. Executive case

Amateur sport in Tāmaki Makaurau is being asked to absorb population growth and a documented facility deficit, keep participation cheap enough that families do not drop out, and do both while the two dirty rivers that actually keep many clubs solvent (Class 4 pokie grants and, to a lesser extent, alcohol sponsorship) are being throttled by policy that is correct on harm and silent on replacement.

Council already spends real money. SRFIF is $185 million across the Long-term Plan 2024-2034 ($150 million plus $35 million extra in FY26-FY28), plus operating grants and local-board grants. That is not nothing. It is also not a system. It is a contestable and invitation-only grant sitting on general rates and LTP headroom. The word “targeted” inside SRFIF means a funding process. It is not a targeted rate. A targeted rate is a statutory instrument under section 16 of the Rating Act. Revenue from it cannot be quietly raided for City Rail Link interest without a fresh political fight and a Funding Impact Statement change. That distinction matters.

Three lids are closing at once. Auckland’s Class 4 Gambling Venue Policy is a sinking lid: no new venues, no extra machines, no relocation. That policy should stay. Online casino regulation will not replace Class 4 community distributions on a like-for-like basis or on a club budget cycle. Alcohol sponsorship in New Zealand sport is only $10-12 million a year nationally. And Council has prescribed its own general rates path of 6.8, 5.8 and 7.9 percent then no more than 3.5 percent, while central government moves toward a 2-4 percent rates target from 1 July 2029. Under a lid, new permanent spend from general rates is a zero-sum raid on something else.

Against that, amateur sport is one of the few things local government funds that compounds. Sport New Zealand’s Social Return on Investment study found $2.12 of social value for every $1 of financial and non-financial input in the 2019 baseline. Physical health $9.02 billion. Subjective wellbeing $3.32 billion. Social capital $1.13 billion. Volunteer contribution $3.09 billion. Community participation is about 73 percent of the sector’s economic GVA and employment. Organised sport adds adolescent wellbeing benefit after you control for raw exercise. Clubs are the largest remaining weekly machine in the city for face-to-face contact across households. Most other community spend is consumption. Sport is capital plus prevention plus belonging.

The Northland Regional Sporting Facilities Rate proves the instrument: roughly $16 per property per year, seed funding that has repeatedly leveraged outside capital at two-to-one or better, and a rate the public forced the regional council to keep when staff called it “not core business.” Auckland is a unitary authority. The cleaner version is available here.

3. The three lids

3.1 Gambling: the sinking lid is working as designed

Auckland Council’s Class 4 venue policy is a sinking lid under the Gambling Act 2003. No consent for new venues. No increase in machine numbers. No replacement if a venue drops machines. No relocation across the city. When a pub or club venue dies, the licence dies with it. The policy has been reviewed and retained. Harm-reduction groups want it tighter, not looser. They are not wrong about harm concentration in high-deprivation areas. This paper does not ask Council to loosen the lid.

It asks Council to stop pretending the lid has no fiscal consequence for Saturday morning sport. Class 4 societies must return a large share of proceeds to authorised purposes. Amateur sport is explicitly an authorised purpose; professional sport is not, except limited junior development. That legal fact is why rugby, football, netball and the rest became structurally addicted to pokies.

Nationally, Class 4 distributions to the sport sector were about $166 million in 2022, with Sport NZ estimating 84 percent to clubs and 13 percent to regional bodies. Department of Internal Affairs reporting has put sporting organisations at around $144 million in a recent year. Rugby and football alone have taken more from pokies in a single year than the entire national alcohol-sponsorship pool. Council’s own gambling-policy review noted that, on average, half of community grants from this source go to sports organisations. In one cited snapshot Auckland GMP-related allocation was in the order of $82 million, with about $23 million granted to community organisations, half of that sport. That is not a rounding error. That is operating budget.

Two further shocks sit on the slope. First, machine numbers fall slowly; spend per remaining machine can rise; grants do not always collapse overnight. Do not claim an overnight cliff if the data is a slope. Do claim a direction. The slope plus inflation plus insurance is enough to kill marginal clubs. Second, the 2025-26 fight over online casino licensing was exactly this: national sporting organisations warning that licensed iGaming without a hard community-return equivalent would vaporise the model. A later 4 percent gross-gaming-revenue community contribution, with first-year guesses of $10-20 million nationally and money not flowing until 2027, is not a replacement for hundreds of millions a year of Class 4 community distribution. Lottery Fund redesign that lists sport as a priority is welcome and insufficient.

You cannot run a city’s participation system on a vice tax you are simultaneously trying to extinguish. That is not a moral insight. It is arithmetic.

3.2 Alcohol: small money, bad optics, shrinking licence

Sport NZ / NZIER work put alcohol sponsorship in New Zealand sport at $10-12 million a year, 5-6 percent of sponsorship revenue, split roughly 45 percent national bodies, 5 percent regional, 50 percent clubs. Against pokies it is a rounding error at system level and a lifeline at some club bars. It is also the first line a public-health submission will demand you cut. Treat alcohol money as a sunset line, not a pillar. Do not try to turn alcohol licensing fees into a sport fund. Licensing is cost-recovery for a regulatory function. Using it as a harm-for-good swap will spend years in court and poison the rates case.

3.3 Council’s own prescribed lid

Auckland does not have an old-style statutory “closed lid” on rates today. It has something more binding in practice.

Long-term Plan 2024-2034 locked in 6.8 percent / 5.8 percent / 7.9 percent, then no more than 3.5 percent average residential increase for the rest of the plan. The 7.9 percent year is City Rail Link-heavy. The bargain was: eat the one-off, then live near inflation.

The Mayoral proposal put a quantified affordability rule around inflation plus 1.5 percent.

Central government has moved toward a rates target of 2-4 percent from 1 July 2029, with transition, monitoring, and the prospect of Local Government Act Part 10 “problem” findings if councils blow through. Water is carved out. Everything else is not. Auckland’s later-year 3.5 percent sits inside that band.

Under a lid, “just put more into SRFIF from general rates” will not survive contact with the lid. Council already won one LTP bump, the extra $35 million. It will not win a second and a third once the 2-4 percent target is live. A targeted rate still counts toward a total-rates target. It is not a free lunch. What it buys is transparency, hypothecation, and a political coalition that can defend the line when the next austerity cycle arrives. That is how Northland kept its sporting facilities rate.

4. Legal framework, how to strike the rate without getting it overturned

4.1 The power

Local Government (Rating) Act 2002, section 16: a local authority may set a targeted rate for one or more activities or groups of activities if those activities are identified in its funding impact statement as the activities for which the rate is set. It may apply to all rateable land or to categories under section 17. It may be uniform or differential. Factors sit in Schedule 3 (capital value, land value, SUIP, land area and others). If you strike it for community sport facilities and participation, you spend it on that. That constraint is the point of using the tool.

Auckland is a unitary authority. You do not need a regional-council workaround. Northland did, because district councils own the facilities and the regional council collected the rate. The cleaner version is one rate, one Funding Impact Statement line, one allocation framework that already exists.

4.2 The process you cannot skip

Local Government Act 2002 consultation principles (s82) and, for an LTP, the special consultative procedure. You do not sneak a new rate through a committee resolution. You put it in the LTP or a material amendment. You amend the Revenue and Financing Policy so the funding mix for community sport and active recreation expressly includes a targeted rate. Auckland’s current policy already says targeted rates are appropriate where a specific group benefits, or where transparency is desired even if the rate is universal. That second limb is how you justify a region-wide amateur-sport rate: the benefit is city-wide (health, youth, reduced future service demand, cohesion); the transparency is the point.

4.3 The trap, section 21

Uniform fixed charges, the Uniform Annual General Charge plus uniform targeted rates, cannot exceed 30 percent of total rates revenue. Auckland already uses a large UAGC and a stack of fixed targeted rates (waste, some BIDs, swimming-pool compliance, some local transport and paths rates). A sport rate designed as a fixed dollar per SUIP eats that headroom. A rate in the dollar of capital value avoids the 30 percent trap and loads more onto higher-value properties. That is a political choice, not a legal mystery. Model both before consultation or Finance will kill the paper in closed session.

4.4 What the activity definition must say, and must not say

Write facilities, participation access, and defined operating support for community-access venues. Do not write “mental-health treatment” or “social cohesion service” as the activity. Those are rationales. If you medicalise the FIS you wander into clinical regulation and lose. If you write only “sport” you invite a judicial-review argument that professional franchises and events bidding are in scope.

Fund: capital for non-council community sport and active recreation facilities that address Priority Plan network gaps; a capped operating-subsidy stream for regional and sub-regional community-access facilities; participation access (fee relief, transport in high-deprivation catchments, disability and low-participation codes). Do not fund professional franchises, high-performance programmes, events bidding, or bar refits that fail Department of Internal Affairs authorised-purpose tests.

5. Dollar-for-dollar returns

The best New Zealand number is Sport NZ’s Social Return on Investment of recreational physical activity. For every $1 of financial and non-financial input in the 2019 baseline, $2.12 of social value. Total social outcomes about $16.8 billion against inputs of $7.95 billion. Net present value about $8.86 billion. Combined social-plus-economic framing used by Sport NZ is in the order of $21 billion a year. Community participation is about 73 percent of sector GVA ($3.96 billion, 1.4 percent of national output) and of employment (53,480 jobs, 2.5 percent of employment).

Wellbeing domain (SROI 2019)

Value

What it is

Physical health

$9.02 billion

Quality of life, life expectancy, avoided disease; net of ACC sport claims

Subjective wellbeing

$3.32 billion

Adult life satisfaction; young people’s happiness; volunteer wellbeing

Work, care and volunteering

$3.09 billion

Replacement value of volunteer labour

Social capital

$1.13 billion

Trust, belonging, community engagement

Income / productivity

$0.89 billion

Reduced absenteeism and related output

Headline ratio

$2.12 per $1

Māori cultural outcomes deliberately not monetised, additional

SROI is a modelled wellbeing valuation, not a laboratory measurement. Sensitivity analysis exists; $2.12 can move. Anyone who pretends the number is scripture is selling. Anyone who pretends there is no robust evidence that community sport outperforms a large slice of community-development spend is also selling. Treat it as a conservative baseline.

What “better than most community programmes” actually means:

Volunteers are unpaid operating expenditure. The sector looks cheap on the rates line and expensive to replace. If clubs fold you do not get the same hours from a contracted NGO at living wage plus overhead.

Facilities are multi-use public infrastructure that happen to be owned by trusts and clubs. That is why SRFIF exists for non-council assets. When they disappear, demand dumps onto council parks, pools and halls that are already rationed. Funding 40-60 percent of a club or trust build is cheaper than owning 100 percent of a council build.

Prevention is front-loaded. Health benefits accrue to Te Whatu Ora, ACC and employers, not to the local board that approved a $15,000 grant. Councils chronically underinvest because the fiscal return leaks to the Crown. A targeted rate is how a city captures local political credit for a national health externality.

Throughput. A club that fields junior teams, a midweek social grade, and holiday programmes is a high-volume machine. Compare that to a 12-week contracted wellbeing course for 40 people. Both can be good. Only one scales without a new RFP every year.

Physical inactivity was estimated at $1.3 billion nationally and $402 million in Auckland in 2010, direct health, lost productivity, premature death. The study is old. Costs have not gone down. Inactivity has not been solved. Treating the health bill as someone else’s problem while starving the cheapest prevention system in the city is accounting fraud by another name.

Sport injures people. ACC sport and recreation claims have been climbing. That cost is already netted in the SROI health line. Name the ACC cost and keep going. Do not let opponents pretend the case forgot injuries.

The facility deficit is not abstract. The National Indoor Active Recreation and Sport Facilities Strategy identified a national shortfall of 107 indoor courts, 73 of them in Auckland, plus material aquatic shortfalls. SRFIF’s 2025/26 targeted process put $14.35 million into six invited priority projects. That is what happens when allocation stops spreading peanut butter. A rate lets Council do that every year instead of whenever the LTP mood is generous.

6. Mental health and social wellbeing

These are not a soft appendix. They are the second-largest quantified return after physical health, they are the part of the system Council actually owns through clubs and fields, and they are the part most other community programmes claim without a comparable evidence stack.

6.1 Activity is protective; organised amateur sport is the delivery system

Adults who meet the guideline of at least 2.5 hours a week of moderate-to-vigorous activity have 51 percent higher odds of healthy mental wellbeing. At 4.5 hours the odds rise to 65 percent. Odds improve with each extra day. Vigorous activity beats moderate (57 percent versus 23 percent higher odds).

Sport NZ’s submission to the 2018 Mental Health Inquiry used the then-best synthesis: physical activity associated with roughly 10 percent lower chance of depression in children aged 5-18, 22 percent in adults, 21 percent in older adults. International dose-response work since then is consistent, even about 75 minutes a week associated with around 18 percent lower depression risk, 150 minutes with around 25 percent in large pooled analyses. A 20-ish percent shift in population depression risk is enormous when the clinical end cannot staff the clinic.

A New Zealand adolescent study found that any recreational activity raised odds of better wellbeing (odds ratio 2.49). Meeting guidelines helped (OR 1.63). Organised sport still added benefit after controlling for total activity: any organised sport, OR 1.66; each extra hour of organised sport, OR 1.09. The club, the team, the coach, the Saturday structure is doing work a solo jog does not.

Active NZ 2024/25 keeps showing the live pattern: young people who meet activity guidelines report higher life satisfaction (8.1 out of 10), more sleep, fewer mental-health issues. For tamariki and rangatahi, sport and leisure-time activity track life satisfaction more tightly than PE, active travel or chores. Fun and time with whānau and friends are the top motives. The product is social, not only biomedical.

A 2023 systematic review of adult sport participation found better psychological wellbeing and lower ill-being, plus social outcomes. Team sport outperformed individual sport. Frequency matters. Elite sport is the exception, higher distress at the sharp end. This rate is for amateur clubs, not high-performance psych contracts.

SROI attributed about $56 million to increased wellbeing (happiness) of tamariki and rangatahi. Māori outcomes were deliberately not monetised. Whanaungatanga, wairua, intergenerational transmission and participating as Māori sit on top of the $2.12 ratio. Using only the monetised SROI understates the return in Tāmaki Makaurau.

6.2 Why this sits with Council, not only Health

Te Hiringa Mahara’s post-He Ara Oranga monitoring is the political hook. The wider conditions that keep people well, physical health, social connections, material resources, have not improved fast enough, so distress stays high and services drown. Youth Health and Wellbeing Survey 2025: about 21 percent of 13-19-year-olds at high psychological distress; 13 percent high depressive symptoms. Youthline’s generation survey puts mental health as the number-one issue young people name.

Council will not rates-fund its way to a psychiatrist. It can rates-fund the participation machine associated with better wellbeing before people fall into the clinical net. Mental-health treatment is Crown. Mental-health determinants that live on parks, courts and clubrooms are territorial. Pretending otherwise is how cities outsource prevention and then complain about youth “activation” budgets.

6.3 Limits, say them first

Association is not a prescription pad. A lot of youth data is cross-sectional. Healthier, more resourced children play sport; sport also makes some children healthier. Both are true. The organised-sport-still-adds-value finding is the shield against the selection-effect attack. Do not claim clubs cure major depression.

Sport also harms. Exclusion, racism on the sideline, body-image cultures, sexual harm, concussion, parental abuse, and clubs that make girls and disabled children disappear are real. If the rate funds facilities without codes of conduct, coach education and access rules, Council will subsidise the problem. Put safeguarding and inclusion in the funding agreement the way co-funding ratios are put in.

Equity gaps persist. Girls, disabled young people, some ethnic minorities and high-deprivation areas still have lower activity. A city-wide rate that rebuilds lights in already-served catchments and calls it mental health is a lie.

7. Social cohesion

Cohesion is the claim everyone reaches for and almost nobody specifies. In New Zealand policy language it is not “people being nice.” Te Korowai Whetū / Ministry of Social Development frames it as people who belong, participate, are included, are recognised, and trust each other and institutions. Auckland Quality of Life work uses the same bones. That is the test. A club that packs its own tribe tighter while the next suburb cannot get court time is bonding. It is not cohesion.

7.1 The city problem

Sport NZ’s outlook work records declining cohesion: polarisation, institutional distrust, a split between “elites” and everyone else. Only about half of New Zealanders feel a sense of community in their neighbourhood. The Helen Clark Foundation 2026 cohesion survey: national belonging still high (84 percent); local community belonging about half; trust in government around two in five. Auckland’s diversity is an asset and a fracture line at the same time. You do not fix that with a billboard. You fix it with repeated, low-stakes contact across difference.

7.2 Three kinds of capital, keep them separate

Bonding. Thick ties among people who already look, speak or play alike. The kitchen-table club. Intergenerational photos on the wall. New Zealand club research shows committees often prize social and symbolic capital over professionalisation. Bonding is why the volunteer shows up in the rain. It is also how a club becomes a closed shop.

Bridging. Thinner ties across difference, code, class, ethnicity, age, suburb, school. Shared rules, shared fixture, shared after-match. This is the cohesion prize. Evidence is thinner than the slogan. Sport NZ admits social cohesion is the undervalued SROI domain. The official floor remains $1.13 billion.

Linking. Ties up into institutions: council, schools, police, iwi, funders. The NZASA/AUT national club survey found 56 percent of clubs now have formal school partnerships. Older New Zealand political-science work found sports-group membership associated with higher political engagement. Clubs teach people how to run a meeting, hold a bank account, and argue with a referee without calling the police. That is civic muscle.

7.3 Evidence that survives a hostile hearing

Sport NZ Value of Sport: 84 percent said sport brings people together and creates belonging; 73 percent said it builds vibrant communities (80 percent among Māori respondents); 52.5 percent named social reasons as their main reason for taking part. Voice of Participant 2024-25: members rate highest friendly and welcoming (76 percent), safe environment (74 percent), fair play (72 percent), social environment (69 percent). Rejoin intent 82 percent. If Council funds the pitch and starves the social room, it has misunderstood the product.

Migrants use sport as an entry institution. In 2019 the most common social group or club for new migrants was a sports club (22 percent), ahead of religious groups (19 percent). Auckland Council’s Connect2Sport programme: nearly all participants said it helped them feel more at home. AUT work on immigrant integration through community sport found first contact mattered; post-match social ritual was where bonding and bridging actually happened; host-club warmth was the switch. A cold club produces parallel leagues, not cohesion. Auckland Cricket’s Club is the Hub work with South-East Asian social cricketers is the local case, thousands engaged once clubs stopped waiting for people to walk through a door built for someone else.

Kaupapa Māori settings do cohesion differently. Manaakitanga and whanaungatanga are a direct critique of Western club bonding-by-exclusion. Waka ama growth is not just a participation statistic. It is intergenerational, language-bearing cohesion the monetised SROI refused to price. A rate that only rebuilds one code’s sheds is a cohesion policy written by that code.

Youth cohesion is face-to-face in a screen city. Mentoring-into-club models show the mechanism: coach, teammates, teammates’ families, consistent adult eyes on a young person who would otherwise drop out of every institution except the algorithm. Do not overclaim crime reduction. Do claim consistent adult contact at scale that social services cannot staff.

Place and money. Auckland Quality of Life analysis found belonging and participation exist, but income adequacy predicts who feels recognised and who experiences diversity as a threat. Cohesion without affordable access is middle-class networking.

7.4 Where the club model falls short

Clubs are excellent at bonding in. They are average-to-poor at bridging out unless someone forces the issue. International club-volunteer research is blunt: people recruit people like themselves. NZASA/AUT: only 36 percent of clubs report gender-balanced governance; volunteers down 28 percent since 2018; 72 percent worried about long-term finances; membership has rebounded 12 percent from the 2021 low but the volunteer base has not. A shrinking, ageing, same-looking committee does not accidentally become a cohesion engine for a super-diverse city.

Sideline behaviour is cohesion’s leak. Voice of Participant: 26 percent experience inappropriate sideline behaviour at least occasionally; 4 percent almost every time. High trust that the club would handle integrity issues (77 percent) is not the same as those issues not happening.

The honest sentence: amateur sport is the largest remaining machine in the city for repeated cross-household contact. It currently produces more bonding than bridging. The public dollar is justified if, and only if, Council buys the bridging.

8. The cost of loss is a city cost

If amateur sport shrinks, the bill does not vanish. It relocates.

Facility deficit becomes council capex. Those 73 missing indoor courts become pressure on recreation centres, school halls and “why isn’t there a wet-weather option” deputations. Building as council assets is slower, dearer, and parks whole-of-life opex on the council balance sheet.

Health and inactivity costs stay in the region. Auckland already carried about 31 percent of the national inactivity cost in the 2010 study. Those people use Auckland streets, emergency departments and workplaces.

Social infrastructure is cheaper than remedial infrastructure. Clubs are weekly, intergenerational, and efficient at producing belonging. When they die, isolation is bought back as “community connection” contracts. That market is not cheaper. It is just more professional and worse at Saturday mornings.

Youth occupancy of time is a crime-and-health proxy. Overclaim this and it sounds like a 1980s mayor. Undercclaim it and you ignore why every police district likes sports clubs more than youth PowerPoints.

Cohesion thins first at the bridge. Bonding retreats into the groups that can still pay. Migrant integration delays. Volunteer civic skill leaves the suburb. Local-board submissions become a professional class talking to itself.

Local economic activity is not “the Warriors.” Community sport is the majority of sector GVA. Construction, maintenance, uniforms, travel, after-match food, physio, local circulation attached to a volunteer-heavy sector whose direct GVA understates its importance because it does not pay itself properly.

One line: the city will pay more, later, on the council and Crown books, for worse outcomes, after the volunteer equity has been written off.

9. Proposed instrument

9.1 Design principles

Hypothecate. Proceeds only for the defined activity group. Publish an annual schedule of what the rate built and who it reached.

Leverage. Council share typically 30-60 percent of project cost. Balance from Lotteries, remaining gaming trusts, philanthropy, club debt and central government. Northland’s rate seeded projects that repeatedly pulled more than a dollar of outside capital per dollar of rate.

Use existing allocation architecture. Priority Plan plus SRFIF framework. Invitation pathway for network-critical projects. Contestable pathway for breadth. Independent review panel. Local-board input without a 21-way pork barrel.

Buy bridging, not only sheds. Multi-code and multi-community hubs over single-tribe palaces. Fee relief, women and girls’ prime time, disability access, migrant and former-refugee welcome processes as conditions of capital. Clubrooms as civic rooms if ratepayers pay for the roof.

Cap opex so it cannot eat the build programme. Northland’s purity (capital only) helped them defend the rate. Auckland is big enough for capital plus a capped access and operating pot. Write the split into the FIS.

Do not medicalise the activity definition. Mental health and cohesion are rationale and conditions, not the rateable activity.

9.2 Scale

Northland charges in the order of $16 per SUIP or rating unit per year and raises about $1.5 million a year, about $4.5 million per LTP cycle. Auckland has an order of magnitude more rating units. A $20-40 per SUIP rate, or a very small CV rate, is tens of millions a year without being a rates revolt if it is sold as replacement for dying pokie cash and a hedge against health and cohesion costs. This paper does not pick the exact figure. Staff need to model it. Staff must table: number of SUIPs, 30 percent cap headroom, residential versus business incidence, GST, collection cost (near zero on an existing assessment).

9.3 What good looks like on the ground

SRFIF’s own 2025/26 targeted allocations show the pattern: hockey turf and lights at Lloyd Elsmore; Highbrook watersports clubhouse; Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei sports, recreation and hauora centre; Howick-Pakuranga indoor courts; Wero climb; West Auckland Riding for the Disabled covered arena. Mix of codes, including Māori and disability provision, co-funded, priority-plan aligned. Repeat that logic every year on a hypothecated base, and add an access slice so the door price does not undo the health and cohesion return.

10. Process from this paper to a struck rate

Problem definition Finance cannot shrug off. One staff paper, three numbers: Auckland share of the national facility deficit; club reliance on Class 4 and the trajectory of the sinking lid plus iGaming; SROI $2.12 plus inactivity and youth-distress figures. Attach the Sport NZ / KPMG targeted-rates report so the tool is not invented here.

Revenue and Financing Policy amendment. State the mix: general rates for council-owned parks and assets; fees; development contributions where lawful; grants; and a targeted rate for non-council community sport facilities, access and defined operating support.

Funding Impact Statement design. Name the activity group. Name the rate. Specify categories and factor. Specify duration aligned to the LTP. Specify that proceeds apply only to the defined activity. Write leverage and access rules in the policy underneath.

Allocation governance. Do not invent a new slush board. Use the Priority Plan and SRFIF framework. Ringfence a percentage for high-deprivation catchments and documented participation gaps. Publish results annually.

Consultation that does not lie. State the dollars per average residential property. State that this replaces a funding source Council is deliberately shrinking because of gambling harm. State that it is cheaper than Council owning the same sheds. Invite harm-reduction organisations to support the decoupling even if they hate the historical source. Invite regional sports trusts and codes to bring club numbers, not anecdotes.

Timing. The 2027-2037 Long-term Plan is the strategic window, especially with the rates-target regime phasing in. Annual Plan can adjust a rate that already exists. Creating a new one without LTP-quality consultation is how Council gets judicially reviewed and branded as a rates ambush. Do not wait until pokie grants have already fallen off a cliff and staff are writing emergency club bailouts.

11. Answers to the objections that will be run

“Rates are for core infrastructure, not sport.”

Core is a slogan. The Local Government Act purpose includes meeting current and future needs for good-quality local infrastructure and local public services. Community infrastructure and public services include sport and recreation. Auckland already funds it. The question is instrument, not vires. Northland staff called their rate “not a legislative core function.” The public told them to keep collecting it.

“This subsidises the middle class.”

Some of it does. Say so. Then point at the participation gap, the Priority Plan equity lens, fee-relief rules, and the fact that pokie money is already a regressive extraction from poorer suburbs recycled into clubs that are not always in those suburbs. A transparent city-wide rate plus an allocation policy that weights deprivation and low-participation groups is more honest than the current laundering of harm into grants. If allocation is “whoever has a good consultant,” the attack is deserved.

“Replacing pokie money rewards the model.”

Replacement is not endorsement. Council would not be striking a “pokie replacement rate.” It would be striking a participation-and-facilities rate because the vice tax is being correctly wound down and nothing lawful and stable is taking its place. Moral purity that ends with fewer junior teams is negligence with better adjectives.

“Online gambling and Lotteries will fill the gap.”

Not at club operating scale, not on a timetable clubs can budget to, and not under Council control. A 4 percent GGR sliver arriving in 2027 with unconfirmed criteria is not a rates strategy.

“We already increased SRFIF.”

Yes. $185 million over ten years is serious. It is still grant funding on a lid. It does not fix opex. It does not survive the next austerity cycle intact. Convert the logic of SRFIF onto a hypothecated rate so the programme outlives the current committee.

“Too many targeted rates already.”

Auckland already has waste, water quality, natural environment, climate action transport, city centre, BIDs, pool fences, local transport and paths. Adding one more is ugly. Adding one more that replaces a dirty, declining, inequitable funding source and buys health and weekly belonging is defensible. Design it on capital value if progressivity is the concern; design a low-income rebate pathway if that is what gets the paper through submissions.

“Clubs should raise subs.”

They should, they will, and they are. The National Sport Club Survey is clear: deficits have doubled versus pre-COVID; grant income is about one-fifth of club income; more than half of grant-receiving clubs lean on gaming trusts; families are on payment plans or walking away. “Charge more” is how remnant clubs look healthy while the participation pyramid hollows.

“Social cohesion is unproven.”

Social cohesion is under-measured. Sport NZ says so. The $1.13 billion social-capital line is a floor. Migrant entry, Voice of Participant belonging scores, school-club partnerships, and the organised-sport wellbeing increment after controlling for exercise are not nothing. The correct design response to a measurement gap is to measure on the way through, not to fund nothing.

12. Recommended resolutions

That the Governing Body / Community Committee:

Note that amateur and community sport delivers quantified social and economic returns, including a national SROI of $2.12 per $1, and that organised community sport produces additional wellbeing and cohesion benefits that most episodic community programmes do not match at the same unit cost.

Note that Class 4 gambling proceeds and alcohol sponsorship are declining or politically unsustainable pillars of club funding, and that Council’s sinking-lid venue policy, which this paper supports retaining, makes replacement a Council problem whether or not Council names it.

Note that the Long-term Plan rates path and the forthcoming central government rates target constrain further general rates expansion of SRFIF.

Request the Chief Executive to report back, in time to inform 2027-2037 Long-term Plan consultation, with: modelled SUIP and capital-value options for an Amateur and Community Sport Targeted Rate; section 21 cap implications; incidence by local board; a draft Revenue and Financing Policy amendment; a draft Funding Impact Statement activity definition; and an allocation policy that uses the Priority Plan and SRFIF framework with access and inclusion conditions.

Agree that any such rate, if adopted after consultation, be hypothecated to non-council community sport and active recreation facilities, capped community-access operating support, and participation-access measures, and not be available for professional sport, high-performance programmes, or events bidding.

13. Sources relied on

Primary public sources, so staff and submitters can check the work rather than argue with a vibe.

Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 ss 16, 17, 21 and Schedule 3; Local Government Act 2002 consultation and LTP provisions.

Auckland Council Revenue and Financing Policy; Long-term Plan 2024-2034 and subsequent Annual Plan documents; Sport and Recreation Facilities Investment Fund Framework 2026-2028 and 2025/26 targeted allocations.

Auckland Council Class 4 Gambling (Pokie) Venue Policy 2013 and subsequent statutory reviews (sinking lid retained).

Sport New Zealand / KPMG, Targeted rates for sports and recreation facilities (including Northland Regional Sporting Facilities Rate case study).

Sport New Zealand, Social Return on Investment of Recreational Physical Activity in Aotearoa New Zealand (technical report 2023) and key takeaways; Economic Value of Sport and Active Recreation 2023.

Sport New Zealand, Active NZ 2024/25; Voice of Participant 2024-25; Active Bodies, Active Minds; The value of play, active recreation and sport for local government; Trust and Cohesion outlook.

New Zealand adolescent organised-sport wellbeing study (PMC9324252); 2023 systematic review of adult sport, mental health and social outcomes (Systematic Reviews).

Sport NZ submission to the 2018 Mental Health Inquiry; Te Hiringa Mahara monitoring; Youth Health and Wellbeing Survey 2025; Youthline State of the Generation.

Waikato Regional Council / national physical inactivity cost study (2010 baseline, Auckland $402 million).

Ministry of Social Development, Te Korowai Whetū Social Cohesion indicators; Helen Clark Foundation Social Cohesion in New Zealand 2026; Auckland Quality of Life social cohesion analysis.

NZASA / AUT National Sport Club Survey and Stronger Communities Through Sport (2025); DIA authorised-purpose guidelines; NZIER / Sport NZ alcohol sponsorship estimates.

Auckland Cricket Club is the Hub case; Connect2Sport; published AUT work on community sport and immigrant social capital.

14. Closing

Amateur sport is not a nostalgia project and it is not a nice-to-have sitting below “real” infrastructure. It is the cheapest large-scale prevention and belonging system this Council still has a hand on. The funding model underneath it is a slow-motion liquidation: a sinking lid on the vice tax, a self-imposed lid on general rates, and a coming statutory lid from Wellington.

The lawful answer is already in the Rating Act. Strike a targeted rate. Hypothecate it. Leverage it. Condition it so the public dollar buys bridging and access, not only nicer rooms for the already-bonded. Consult properly in the next Long-term Plan. Measure what is claimed.

A speech will not strike a rate. The city will pay either way.

Contact for this submission

Lodge against the 2027-2037 Long-term Plan consultation when opened, and against any Annual Plan or committee item on SRFIF, community grants, gambling venue policy, or rates affordability. Request that this paper be circulated to the Community Committee and to local boards with sport and recreation facility plans.