Mayor’s View – 4th September, 2008
I do understand there are many people in our newly amalgamated community who have opinions regarding the council’s first budget, in particular on pensioner discounts. However there would appear to be widespread agreement that framing the budget in our particular circumstances was never going to be easy.Concerning pensioner discounts, this council is giving a greater number of pensioners a discount and the total discount now delivered by the CCRC is greater than that for the two previous councils combined.
This rating decision was made by a unanimous vote of all councillors.
Rather than so vehemently criticising the discounts local government is able to sustain, commentators could also look to the State Government, vastly better funded, and yet not increasing its contribution of $180 towards pensioner discounts since 1988! If the State Government’s contribution had even been indexed it would be far in excess of $500 by this time.
It mirrors the systems already in place in other areas of Queensland. For example, the Tablelands Region gives a maximum pensioner discount of $260 to approximately 1,000 pensioners. In the CCRC we have a smaller overall population and a greater proportion of pensioners than the Tablelands – and yet we give a higher pensioner discount.
We have started to integrate the two different rating systems in the north and the south, especially for commercial and rural rate payers. The challenge to deliver an integrated rating system across the whole region remains for the 2009-2010 budget and probably for the 2010-2011 budget, especially for residential rate payers.
Next year it is my intention to seek input on rating alternatives. In this way council will be better acquainted with the diversity of views in the community and the community will have a more direct input into the process.
Hopefully we will also have had the State Government’s response to the Orion Report and will have clearly demonstrated to them the sound financial management contained in this year’s budget. There have been three independent reports on the financial affairs of our Region and a fourth report is currently being prepared.
The time is fast approaching when we have to move from reports funded by the State Government to actions by them, to complement the responsible actions being delivered by the Council. Council calls on the State Government to assume responsibility for the two major Johnstone River bridges in Innisfail and for the Federal and State Governments to fund the outstanding Natural Disaster Relief Assistance projects.
It is particularly unacceptable for the Federal Government to deny our hard hit southern residents previously approved assistance of $700,000 for the Multi Purpose Centre, on unsubstantiated grounds. Council will continue to contest this decision.
I believe we are doing all we can with the resources at our disposal in the circumstances forced upon us.