Community & Business
2 July, 2024
3.6% rate rise, $49m cap works in TRC budget
A 3.6% rate rise and a $49 million capital works program, supported by $21.7 million in government grants, are the hallmarks of Tablelands Regional Council’s 2024-25 Budget handed down last week.
In delivering the $133.2 million budget, Mayor Rod Marti revealed a forecast deficit of $341,000, and that council’s borrowings had reached $15.3 million with a new loan of $11 million for the Ravenshoe and Millstream water network upgrades.
But it wasn’t smooth sailing for all elected representatives, with Cr Kevin Cardew choosing to vote against the adoption of the financial blueprint and Cr Annette Haydon expressing her disappointment that councillors didn’t have enough input into the capital works program.
“After careful consideration, I have decided I will not be supporting this budget in its current form,” Cr Cardew said.
“While I support the general rate increase of 3.6% in keeping with CPI, I do not support the deficit position of $341,000 as I believe council should be operating within its own means.
“In my last term of council, I advocated on many occasions that council needed to change the way we deliver services.
“Messages from our community along the lines of ‘our town centres look terrible’, ‘our cemeteries look terrible’, ‘our roads and roadside drains are terrible’, our building assets and infrastructure are failing due to poor maintenance and the list goes on.”
Cr Cardew said the current budget and previous budgets had not adequately addressed these issues and referred to a service level review that had identified additional funding and resources were needed to tackle them.
“I’m not prepared to spend another term in council following the same trend. We need to change and we need to change now,” he said.
Cr Haydon was critical of the fact councillors had only seen the full budget papers two days before the meeting and wanted more input into the capital works program.
“This is our budget and yet we were given the final capital budget only two days ago. I’m disappointed that councillors did not have the input into the capital budget that we should been allowed” she said.
She referred to changes made to the funding allocation for the Battery Park project at Herberton which had a $500,000 allocation in the 2023-24 budget and $250,000 in 2024-25 budget.
“This has been wiped away, leaving $400,000 in the 2024-25 budget for this project without any consultation with councillors,” Cr Haydon said.
In his Budget address, Mayor Marti said the budget had been framed with cost-of-living pressures top of mind.
“We are fully attuned to cost-of-living pressures and have kept our revenue levels on par with what is needed to deliver essential services to community,” he said.
“It’s not easy to continue to deliver critical services to a growing community when the cost of doing business and the cost of every activity and investment continues to go up, sometimes exponentially, however this is the task.”
Cr Marti said the 3.6% rate rise would not necessarily mean all ratepayers would pay the increase.
“We have continued to apply averaging to the rating valuations for the 2024-25 year and moderated the rateable value by averaging property valuations over three financial years,” he explained.
“This does not mean that everyone’s rates will increase by 3.6%, some will be higher and some lower because the significant range of changes made to valuations continues to unfold through averaging.”
Ratepayers will also pay more for their water, with the council embarking on renewal and new water installations across almost the entire TRC footprint.
As such, the access charge will increase by 3.5% or $22, while the water consumption charge will increase by 22c/1000 litres.
“The importance of an ongoing focus and investment in our water assets cannot be understated,” Mayor Marti said.
In the capital budget, $14.3 million has been allocated for roads, bridges, footpaths and drains; $15.8 million for water improvements; $9.9 million for road repairs due to flooding; $3 million for parks, gardens and precincts; and $1.4 million for community buildings and amenities.
On the operational side, $84.1 million has been allocated, with $23.4 million for roads and bridges, $14 million for water, $8.9 million for waste, $4.4 million for parks and gardens, $12.2 million for corporate and community buildings, $8.3 million for wastewater and $2.8 million for community, events and tourism.
