Shire of West Arthur ratepayers are set to experience a 4 per cent rates rise after the budget for the 2018/19 financial year was adopted at the shire council meeting last week.
The rates rise for the current financial year is an increase over the previous year’s rise of 3 per cent.
Shire of West Arthur president Ray Harrington said he was pleased the shire was able to keep the rates rise to just 4 per cent.
“I’m pleased we were able to keep it as low as a 1 per cent increase [on the previous year],” he said.
“We’ve been very static on 3 per cent but we’ve had to go to four [this year].
“We actually absorbed a 6 per cent rise – we should have had a 10 per cent increase.”
Cr Harrington said the shire had an increase in costs, which meant it had to cut spending in other areas to cover them.
“It has been a couple of decisions of the state government that have cost us dearly,” he said.
“Where they’re tightening their belt, they’ve pushed it on to us and we’ve not pushed it on but absorbed it.
“Basically we absorbed about $100,000 which is your 6 per cent. We absorbed that through further cost cutting.”
Cr Harrington said the shire hadn’t ‘cut and slash’ projects, but rather ‘tightened up across the board’.
“I’m very pleased the way that our staff and our council were able to go through the process,” he said.
“We’ve had to cut services a bit ... and look at our plant replacement program, which is a 30 year plan, and trim that a little bit.
“Meanwhile we’re keeping up all our maintenance and our roads – we haven’t cut anywhere in the road maintenance or anything.”
Cr Harrington said despite the rate rise and increase in cost, the West Arthur community was in a good place at the moment.
“The real good thing is we just finished a lot of big projects – the housing, the Community Resource Centre expansion, the hall refurbishment,” he said.
“There’s a list of 15 to 20 projects that have been done over the last 10 years that have really just finished now.
“I feel we’ve got all the sporting facilities and public amenities up to date in the shire … We’re lucky that we’re in a phase where we’ve done a lot of expansion and now we’re just going to ride it out for a while.
“Our long term plan is maybe two years of four [per cent rate rises] and then going back to three.”
