It’s a throwaway comment I hear sometimes, or read on social media: We get nothing for our rates.

Since you woke up this morning, Council has likely been involved in your life; flushing the toilet, using water to shower and make breakfast, and then walking, cycling, or driving to work on footpaths and roads which are all services and assets provided and maintained by council.

If your rubbish is collected at the kerbside and if you walk in our domains and open spaces, visit the library and art gallery and museum, or swim and play sport at EA Networks Centre, then these are also assets provided and maintained by council.

Council also provides other services, like tourism promotion and economic development, and runs events for our community like Glow in the Park and the Hakatere Noodle Festival.

To say ratepayers get nothing for their rates is way wide of the mark.

Delivering good value for money will always be the aim – so that is why you often hear councils talk about balancing affordable rates with services the community needs. We don't always get it right but if we make a mistake, we own it and try to fix it.

There are other ways to look at it too. In Ashburton, the average high capital value household pays about $76 a week in rates or $305 a month, which is about the same as a monthly power bill.

Those rates give you drinking water, wastewater disposal, roads, rubbish collection, parks, libraries and a whole lot more.

Or compare rates with the taxes you pay to central government.

A recent Local Government New Zealand Infometrics report showed just how stretched councils are. For every $1 you pay in rates, you’re paying $10 in taxes. Yet councils own more than a quarter of New Zealand’s infrastructure and keep the essentials running: roads, pipes, parks, pools and libraries.

All councils have challenges, geographical or social, but they are all heavily invested in providing the core services their communities need to live, work and play.