If they can’t stop developments in far-flung areas, it looks like councillors are just going to refuse to service them.

It was only a few minutes into the Auckland Council planning committee’s debate on what it called “unanticipated development” and Wayne Brown was already talking about shit. Specifically, how it would be disposed of. “I certainly wouldn’t call anyone who came up with the idea of trucking sewage to Whangārei an expert,” the mayor grumbled. “Idiot comes to mind.”

Brown was mad at the panel that approved a 1,200-home Delmore development in Orewa, which may need to truck away its residents’ turds when times get tough at its privately built waste facility. It’s one of a number of massive new, and completely unplanned for, housing projects in outlying areas that have won consent under the government’s fast-track regime. All up, council’s planners thought the developments could result in 50,000 to 60,000 new homes.

Now councillors were considering what to do about all the new towns potentially springing up in rural areas in the city’s north, west and south, and none of them seemed any happier than Brown. Shit was at the heart of their frustration. How to dispose of it was just the start. They took aim at what they saw as a shit political process. Shit decisions by the people occupying fast track panels. Most of all, the shit-tonne of extra costs that come with consenting far-flung developments that the council hasn’t prepared for. “It’s quite literally been a shit show,” said Manukau councillor Lotu Fuli as the debate wound down. “And when things turn to shit, it’s going to be up to Auckland Council and Auckland residents to step in, fix the issues and pay.”

All day, the debate centred around how to handle that potential expense. Though density opponents often fret about the pressure urban development puts on pipes, the greenfield growth touted by people like Act leader David Seymour comes with much more pernicious infrastructure issues. It’s expensive building new roads, pipes, powerlines, wifi connections, parks and other amenities in the middle of a paddock. Even if developers pay that upfront cost, the council is saddled with the ongoing bill for maintaining the new infrastructure and servicing the existing road network to handle a flood of new commuters from a former field near Kaipara.

Council planners estimated the cost of the unanticipated fast-track development at around $5bn. Though around $3bn of that could be billed to developers, they believed about $2bn would fall back on council in the form of what they called “non-growth-related costs”; basically managing the extra congestion, the new parks residents would demand and more.

If the government had just dumped that invoice on councils, it would be annoying. But to do so while delivering patronising lectures about their financial profligacy and capping their means of actually paying for the infrastructure costs the government is foisting on them? Well, that was a step too far, and everyone was, to use the technical term, fucked off. “It seems that at every step of the planning regime of this city, the deeper pockets are the ones that get what they want, and that’s outrageous,” said Waitākere councillor Shane Henderson. “Who is protecting elite soils in Auckland? Who is encouraging transport-related climate emissions reduction? This is the role of the local government, and yet we are disempowered at every turn by the central government.”

Two options were on the table to deal with the issue, and they ranged from extreme to extremely extreme. The first was introducing a targeted rate to make sure developments in places like Delmore in the north or Sunfields in the south pay the full infrastructure bill associated with their construction. “And if that means the per-household charge to a developer may be $200,000, so be it,” said Manurewa-Papakura ward councillor Daniel Newman.

But that came with potential fishhooks. Planning committee chair Richard Hills said his advice was that under the government’s rates capping legislation, any targeted costs they imposed on the residents of Delmore and similar suburbs wouldn’t be allowed if they tipped the city’s average rates rises past the 4% upper limit. “We are hamstrung in every direction,” he said.

The other option was to simply refuse to service the fast-tracked houses. Don’t build parks. Deprioritise the new suburbs for things like dog control. “We need to be clear to the people buying in, you’re paying thousands for wastewater, thousands for water supply, but we’re also not going to be able to supply the services you expect because we can’t do that,” said Hills.

That too would come with potential downsides. Councillors saw residents coming to them, appealing for things like playgrounds. It would be hard, politically and emotionally, to say no. But that’s what a lot of them seemed willing to commit to anyway. Houkura board member Karen Wilson reminded colleagues that ratepayers wouldn’t thank them if they failed to do everything they could to ward off a massive potential future bill. “Aucklanders will take Auckland Council to task if you don’t foresee every eventuality,” she said. “So that is why you go hard or go home.”

Council can be a fractious place. Most meetings involve at least a few insults between Waitematā councillor Mike and mayor Wayne Brown, and one stern staredown from Albany’s John Watson. It’s a measure of the coalition government’s innovative approach to local control that this issue inspired an outbreak of complete unity. Councillors unanimously voted to send their officers off to assess the legality of imposing targeted rates and refusing service. Every indication is that when the advice comes back in a month, they’ll go hard on the new homes.