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November 22, 2012
The South Burnett Regional Council’s 2012-13 Budget may finish the year in deficit after the Council lost more than $1.4 million in government funding yesterday.
At their November monthly meeting, councillors learned that $890,000 has been cut from the SBRC’s Queensland Local Government Grants Commission allocation this year, and a further $519,000 has been cut from State road grants.
General Manager Finance & Information Services Gary Wall announced the cuts.
Councillors and senior staff were visibly shocked by the news, which has wiped out all the savings the Council has tried to make in the four months since its Budget was brought down on July 11.
Mr Wall told councillors he’d been advised several months ago that Queensland was facing an average 2.84 per cent reduction in local government funding this year from the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
This was brought about by a shortfall in Federal tax revenues.
But yesterday morning he found out the South Burnett will be facing a 10.9 per cent reduction in this year’s grant allocation.
“We don’t know why we’re getting a 10.9 per cent cut when the state-wide average is less than 3 per cent,” Mr Wall told Council.
He said he’d looked at the Grants Commission allocations for several neighbouring councils and found there were wide variations.
Some councils – such as the North Burnett and Cherbourg – had received increases, while others suffered much smaller reductions.
Mr Wall also said it was unclear if this year’s cut was a “one-off” or was likely to be ongoing but he would be holding discussions with the Commission in the near future to see if he could find out more about the methodology it used to arrive at the SBRC’s 2012-13 allocation.
“It’s clear that there are winners and losers in this. It’s just not clear why,” he said.
The SBRC was also told its TIDS (Transport Infrastructure Development Scheme) funding has been cut almost $520,000.
This was a result of 2012-13 Queensland State Government Budget cuts which had reduced TIDS funding from $63 million to $40 million statewide.
Combined, the two cuts have created a $1.4 million shortfall in the Council’s Budget plans.
After the meeting, councillors said they were “very disappointed” at the news.
“We really struggled to put this year’s Budget together and keep rate rises as low as we could,” Cr Barry Green told southburnett.com.au.
“It was a very long, hard process and we were only able to put it together by making a lot of compromises and including big cost savings into our calculations.
“If we hadn’t had such a good working relationship with one another, I doubt we could’ve pulled it off.
“This news has just wiped out all that hard work.”
Gympie Regional Council faces a similar cut in this year’s Grants Commission allocation (10.3 per cent), and Toowoomba a cut of 7.39 per cent.
In the South Burnett, only Cherbourg has recorded a rise (9.7 per cent, or $40,291).
- Related Article: SBRC’s 2012 Budget: What You’ll Pay
