City of Ballarat’s chief executive says council will have to start harshly scrutinising its non-essential services unless there’s significant change to the state government’s rate capping protocol.
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Justine Linley said over the last two years, the municipality had already stripped “significant” money out of the operating budget. But further cuts forced by the rate cap will impact wages of staff providing services for home and community care, child-care, and parks and road maintenance.
The call for a review of the Fair Go Rates System is part of Ballarat City Council’s submission to the exposure draft of the Local Government Bill 2018.
The submission was approved at the extension of the February 21 council meeting on Wednesday night.
Ms Linley said the current rate capping system, which is reviewed annually, hampered council’s ability to undertake medium and long-term planning, as there was no clear basis to project council’s future income from.
“We don’t want to downgrade and run down the core infrastructure of the city, that includes roads, drains, footpaths and community centres.”
- City of Ballarat CEO Justine Linley
“It means a greater amount of scrutiny will come on to the services we provide,” she said.
“Any services where it’s not a core activity of local government, or have been funded previously or collaboratively with state or federal government, we have to look at every single one of those services and make a determination as to whether its something the ratepayers can continue to afford to subsidise.
Ms Linley said that raising rates was not what City of Ballarat was fundamentally about, and would “prefer that there was a different model of taxational revenue raising other than a property-based rates system”.
But she said there was also a disconnect for ratepayers around understanding what services City of Ballarat provides from rates, such as libraries, pools and childcare.
Council rates for the 2018-19 financial year were capped at 2.25 per cent by the Essential Services Commission in December, with council deciding not to apply for an exemption.
The council was one of 10 Victorian municipalities to apply for an exemption from the rate capping scheme through the Essential Services Commission in 2016. But the council’s bid to raise rates by 3.7 per cent was rejected by the ESC as it was deemed to not be in the long-term interest of ratepayers.
