The Budget ‘We Had To Have’

Cr Terry Fleischfresser has praised the Council’s 2018-19 Budget, saying it was ‘the Budget we have to have’.

The Budget, handed down on Monday, will impose an average 2.5 per cent rate rise on residential property owners.

However, rural property owners could face rises as high as 6 per cent this year after the Council took a decision to axe the $200 a year Road Levy and incorporate it into the general rate.

The move will tie the levy to property valuations, and means that in future rural landholders will pay more towards road maintenance than town dwellers.

It also means the levy now has the potential to rise above $200 in future years.

“Good financial management is the key to local delivery,” Cr Fleischfresser said.

“This is a Budget I believe meets the concerns and visions expressed to me by the community, identifying the planned income and expenditure.

“With a current backlog of road maintenance standing in excess of $10 million and annual depreciation of $13 million, it (is) difficult to find the increased funds to really address the list of priorities that the public require without increasing rates.”

Cr Fleischfresser said the Council had invested heavily in collecting up-to-date data to enable better insight into its day-to-day operations.

“There will be no gain without pain.

“We may not like it, but this is the Budget we have to have so Council can focus on the priority items you as a community have asked for,” he said.

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“Before the election we had no idea what was going to be the outcome of the audits that the public wanted,” Cr Potter said.

“Since having them done, we realised that the position we were in was not the best.

“For this reason, tough decisions were made, but not lightly.”

Cr Danita Potter said one bright side to this year’s Budget is that the Council has managed to expand its budget for the Regional Arts Development Fund to $15,000.

Cr Potter said she felt the future of the arts in the region was “in a great space now”.

“It has been hard work to start seeing some positive outcomes, but everything needs a starting point and ours starts with one piece of art in the Kingaroy forecourt,” Cr Potter said.