By STEVE GRAY
DECADES of infrastructure neglect are behind Tenterfield Shire Council’s push to hike rates by 84 per cent over the next decade, a meeting in Liston on Tuesday night was told.
A team of council bureaucrats outlined the dire financial position which has seen the council threatened with amalgamation.
About 30 people attended the meeting, one of eight the council is holding as it campaigns for the massive rates increases.
However, an opponent of the planned increase told the meeting that council is only putting one side of the story.
Robert Walker of the Tenterfield Rates and Anti-amalgamation Forum said council was only making the case for the huge rates increases and not the community’s right to protest them.
General manager Lotta Jackson said every possible cut to council expenditure had been made.
“We looked at every line item, we cut costs where we could. We’ve cut costs in every single area except roads and roads infrastructure,” she said.
Council property surplus to requirements had been sold or was on the market, Ms Jackson said.
“What we’re left with now is to increase rates through a special rates variation,” she said.
Including the three per cent rate pegging increase allowed by the State Government council wants to lift rates by 15 per cent next financial year, 10 per cent for the following three years and then abide by rate pegging.
The meeting was told the first year’s increase amounted to an average $71.30 per ratepayer, “or half a loaf of bread or not quite a litre of petrol” per week.
Director of Engineering Services Dennis Gascoigne said much of the shire’s infrastructure was built in the Depression and just after World War II and $400 million of assets is now near the renewal phase and the shire needed to find a way to fund the backlog.
“What we have to do now is make a political solution, we have to build the case for a (rates) upgrade,” Mr Gascoigne said.
The meeting was invited to make suggestions about other ways to fund the shire. These varied from returning bitumen roads to gravel; convincing the NSW government to pay rates on the 34 per cent of the shire that is state-owned; to painting towns in theme colours.
Attempts to raise the issue of the local dump were twice quashed, with the meeting restricted to the proposed rates rises.
Opponent Robert Walker said he was refused the opportunity to outline the case against the rises at the Liston meeting and an earlier one at Legume.
“I was not given the same opportunity to speak as other attendees of the meeting,” he said.
“When I was given the opportunity and asked about whether a cost shown on a pie-chart was included in the administration salaries, I was not given a clear answer.”
Mr Walker said he was abused by a councillor at the conclusion of the Liston meeting.
He handed out forms that will allow ratepayers opposing the rate rises to object to the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal.
TIMELINE
Tenterfield Shire Council has invited written submissions on the issue of rates rises by 15 November.
Council will discuss the issue at its regular meeting on 27 November.
It’s application for the rates rises is due by 24 February 2014.
A part-decision by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is due in mid-June 2014.
