Councillor Rick Curach is disappointed the council has failed to support his attempts to reduce rates since Tauranga residents are facing the steepest rates increase of any city in the country.
He thought his motion to have council staff look for ways to make budget savings would have been strongly supported and passed - it was not and the motion failed.

Tauranga City Councillor Rick Curach.

"The council staff would look at the areas where they could potentially trim discretionary items that aren't so important and that people wouldn't miss too much," says Rick.
Tauranga rates are set to increase by 10.9 per cent this year and 36 per cent over the next three years.
Rotorua has a zero rates increase, Hamilton only one or two percent, says Rick.
"We need to try harder, anywhere we can have the potential we can make some savings."
With the public consultation part of the rates process underway, the public have the opportunity to try what Rick failed to do - remove $2.5 million from the budget.
"I wanted to give the ratepayers some relief and offset some of the rates requirement," says Rick.
Last time a similar proposal was put before the council they all voted for it - apart from Bill Faulkner who voted against it, says Rick.
Council staff were asked to find $2.5 million savings - they came back with $2.1 million and that was adopted unanimously, says Rick.
"I think the argument is, last time it was all low-hanging fruit, the savings were easy to find," says Rick.
"This time the argument put forward is that it is unlikely that there would be any further savings without bringing about a reduction in levels of service.
"If you don't ask you don't get. I can't understand why they couldn't have approved that and supported that.
"I think there is room in the organisation to make some savings. Throughout this whole recession there haven't been any jobs at risk. The chief executive officer says he hasn't replaced positions that were open - which is fair enough, but no one has lost their job because of the recession.
"In the private sector we do hear of job losses all the time. So they are insulated, really insulated from the recession."
Rick says councillors should have another look at some of the projects, some could be deferred or even canned over the next few years.