ARARAT Rural City Council is planning to freeze council rates next financial year in a move expected to be applauded by ratepayers.<\/p>\n
Council will adopt its draft budget for the 2022-23 financial year at a meeting next week which will show a zero increase in municipal rates.<\/p>\n
The rate freeze follows on from two years where council managed to cut rates.<\/p>\n
Council CEO Tim Harrison said freezing rates in the new financial year effectively means a net zero increase in rates over five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re pretty excited, it will be a zero increase over a five year period, so we\u2019re very excited by that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a rate cut last year and the year before and a rate freeze this coming financial year which means a zero increase over a five year period which is a great outcome for council and the community,\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Harrison said council has been able to reduce the burden on ratepayers by finding efficiencies within the organisation.<\/p>\n
But he said the rate freeze for 2022-23 will probably be the last.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have maintained the efficiency gains that we made over previous years, that\u2019s how we\u2019ve been able to maintain our zero per cent rate rise over that period but we are reaching a point now with enterprise bargaining agreement, salary increases and so forth there will need to have some form of rating increase next year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Jo Armstrong said council has worked as a whole to minimise the burden on ratepayers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a team, we are all united in our goal to try and do the best we can within our ability to keep the cost of living down for people who live and work here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ARARAT Rural City Council is planning to freeze council rates next financial year in a move expected to be applauded by ratepayers.
\nCouncil will adopt its draft budget for the 2022-23 financial year at a meeting next week which will show a zero increase in municipal rates.
\nThe rate freeze follows on from two years where council managed to cut rates.
\nCouncil CEO Tim Harrison said freezing rates in the new financial year effectively means a net zero increase in rates over five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/council-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-g8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}