The government has urged councils to stop spending on non-essential projects, and stick to the basic services such as water and rubbish removal.
Mr Cleine said the austerity measures needed to keep rates increases in single digits would make the coming process very painful.
"We’ll have to decide what to cut, but some things that are ‘nice to have’ are pretty important to our people, like ... housing [for the elderly], parks and sports grounds, arts funding — they’re the sort of life blood of small communities."
Slashing them was also unlikely to yield significant savings, he said.
It also paled into insignificance compared to the mammoth wall of investment the council was facing for infrastructure in the near future.
"If you cobble all those small things together it virtually kills off our volunteers and a heap of community projects, but you’re doing that while you’ve got an $80 million problem over here."
The amended Act would not prevent councils from spending on the nice-to-haves, but it would be a much harder sell to keep them in the budget, Mr Cleine said.
"I mean it’s very clear from the government rhetoric, that if it’s not rubbish, potholes or water, then we shouldn’t be doing it. And if the community and the council decide that’s what we have to do, all of that stuff is on the block."
— Lois Williams, Local Democracy Reporter
— LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
