June 14, 2012
The South Burnett Regional Council held its final Budget workshop today, with Mayor Wayne Kratzmann warning “hard decisions have to be made”.
One of these hard decisions appears to be the introduction of quarterly bills, which means ratepayers would receive four bills per year if the suggestion is adopted.
Cr Kratzmann said quarterly bills would “assist ratepayers to manage their own budgets”.
Another hard decision will be a rise in rates, although no one from Council is saying how much.
Cr Kratzmann said the SBRC was in the same boat as other councils where revenue from building development and grants from the State Government had dropped.
Council will bring down its 2012/13 Budget in mid-July and says it will be framed around making it “financially sustainable in the long term”.
Cr Keith Campbell said “the impost for 2012/13 will ease the burden in respect of future rate increases”.
Council will also undertake a full review of current services to see if more savings can be made to offset future rate increases. This would be on top of $10 million of savings in Council’s operations achieved over the past four years since amalgamation.
Crs Kratzmann and Campbell both blamed the carbon tax for rates going up.
“No matter which way the carbon tax is sliced and diced it still increases rates,” Cr Campbell said.
Council also said land valuations issued by the State Government would impact on the rate increase.
In March, SBBiz reported (March 26, 2012) that land values had remained relatively constant across the South Burnett with no change in the median value of industrial, multi-unit, single unit residential, rural residential or primary production land. Commercial land actually dropped 1 per cent.
However Cr Campbell explained that for ratings purposes, Council averaged valuations over three years to even out fluctuations.
