Mayor's Budget Speech

Council is pleased to deliver the 2024/25 Financial Year Budget, the first budget for this current term of Council. Our Council has a focus of delivering the essential and basic infrastructure and services for our diverse region in an increasingly difficult environment of external forces.

It is my humble honour to present my first budget as the new Mayor. I am pleased to have put it together with a great team of Councillors and supportive staff. We are very much a back to basics Council and have put together a budget that largely revolves around resealing some of our problem sealed roads to reduce potholes.

Our Council is evaluating the hire of extra machinery such as a Flocon unit for sealed road maintenance and extra resources such as rollers on the maintenance grading. We are developing a longer-term strategy to purchase the machinery needed for the road network. We are also reviewing items including gravel pits, and areas that we can make savings and reduce expenditure.

I campaigned to try to keep rates affordable and our team have kept the general rate rise to a modest 2% as we still have an operating deficit of approximately $3.59 million to contend with.

The news that our Council would again suffer a loss of funding through the Financial Assistance Grants was not well received.

Our Council will continue, to call for a full and transparent review of the grant methodology so that our community receives its fair share of the Financial Assistance Grant from the State and Commonwealth Governments into the future.

Our Council recognises that because of the most recent land revaluation (effective date 30/06/2022), some property owners will face significant increases in general rates, as their property valuation has increased higher than the average.

Council has decided to utilise the averaging tool set out in the Local Government Regulation 2012 to help to minimize the impact of valuation increases for these property owners, for the third year in a row.

Waste, wastewater and water are all separate business units and have various rises due mostly to meeting increased compliance of Government regulations. A summary of these changes is:

• 6% Water Access and Consumption
• 15% Waste Management Levy
• 6% Waste Collection including Recycling
• 3% Sewerage Charges

The requirement to expend significant capital funds to upgrade several landfills, increased compliance with waste disposal, and major water and wastewater upgrades are all driving costs upwards in these areas. Council will continue to lobby for funding from the State and Federal Government to support these major upgrades.

The community has asked for improved water quality for our region and as a start in this budget Council has provided funding to air scour the water pipes in Kingaroy.

I am pleased that our Council has maintained the 10% discount for rates payment as I see several Councils now removing or reducing this discount and both the Community Rescue and Evacuation Levy and the Rural Fire levy remain unchanged.

We were fortunate again to receive Works for Queensland (W4Q) funding of $8.4 million. To ensure equity across the region each Councillor put forward projects for their division with a budget of $1.2 million, distributed fairly across all divisions over the next three (3) years. We do acknowledge and thank the Queensland State Government for this much needed funding.

I would like to thank the Councillors, CEO Mark, the Senior Executive, and the whole team for your work in putting together this budget but most importantly thanks must go to you the people of this beautiful region for putting your faith in this new team to deliver this budget for you.

Thank you and God Bless.

Mayor Kathy Duff