RELATED CONTENT: Northern residents reject SRV
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JUST 13 residents turned up on Monday night to hear Eurobodalla Shire Council leaders explain their case for council’s proposed rate rise.
General manager Catherine Dale, mayor Lindsay Brown, infrastructure services director Warren Sharpe, planning director Lindsay Usher, tourism and communications manager Catherine Reilly, and several other members of staff attended the meeting designed to help residents understand the special rate variation (SRV) and provide feedback.
The 5 per cent increase, if approved, will compound over three years, and, if an annual rate peg rise of 3 per cent is also applied, average ratepayers will pay about $212 more on their annual bill by 2017-18.
Council plans to use the extra funds on a range of new and backlogged infrastructure projects.
The council meeting was held after more than 100 residents gathered at Long Beach on Saturday to protest the rise, unanimously voting to send the council a clear message: We don’t want a rate variation.
At the Moruya meeting on Monday, residents were open to discussing the challenges faced by local government and at least two supported the rise.
However, many expressed concern about how pensioners and those on fixed incomes would accommodate the impost.
Batemans Bay’s Ray Stabler said that with the increased cost of living on top of the rate rise, pensioners would find it difficult to make ends meet.
“Pensions are fixed,” he said.
“You can’t go and ask Centrelink for an increase in pension. So what you have to do is you cut back… and there is a limit to how much you can cut back.
“I’m extremely angry with this council in actually putting this proposal forward, and I will vote against it.”
Dr Dale said that just as residents were facing increasing costs in living, so too was council, after years of rate pegging by the state government.
“Even if the (annual rate) increases are 3 per cent, you often find the building costs are going up 4 per cent,” she said.
“You talk about electricity and power – council pays for the street lights, so suddenly we have got a 74 per cent increase that we need to find.
“That’s why we’ve come to the community with the potential special rate variation because we’re like ducks – we’re paddling madly but just staying afloat.”
Neal Gray, from Campbelltown, pays rates on his family holiday home at South Durras.
He attended the meeting and supported the proposition.
“The information that has come out tonight is that you really care about the area and you want the best,” he said.
“As far as having a $200 increase in rates, even though I’m on part pension, and it’s for our family holiday place, I think that’s really quite reasonable compared to the rates you’re going to pay elsewhere.
“If you don’t have infrastructure in the local area, people won’t come. Your businesses will die… if you don’t maintain the parks, the shops, everything, people will go elsewhere.”
Dr Dale made it clear council had not made a decision on whether to apply to the state government to implement the increase.
She said the council had gone to great lengths to consult with the community, including establishing a dedicated website, a hotline, undertaking a telephone survey, writing to ratepayers and holding a series of information sessions.
“We’re trying to engage as many people as possible in relation to this issue,” she said.
Another council information session will be held at the Batemans Bay Library on Monday.