Recent articles in The Mercury on 18 June – http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/06/18/381698_todays-news.html – and Examiner on 19 June – http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1582011/cpi-rate-risk-link-too-simplistic/?cs=95 – both miss the point arguing over the CPI and whether or not council rates should rise by more or less than CPI.
As noted in Lionel Morrell's post in The Examiner comments today, what matters to ratepayers is that council rates have risen much faster than average weekly earnings.
Intuitively the community knows and understands this and is the reason for the general call for rates to be reduced. The community's understanding is supported by the Tasmanian Government's own research that unequivocally shows that relative to income, the 'grab' from local government has increased in the period 2000-2011.
See section on revenue on the Department of Premier and Cabinet website – http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/171644 State_of_the_Sector_2012_Circulated_Presentation.pdf
Local government, largely for reasons of ego and career enhancement of its elected members and senior management will always have unlimited wants and needs and the current system encourages expenditure growth. Mayors, councillors, general managers carry out large expensive projects, pad out their CVs and go. The community is left paying for such projects.
Examples abound. There is seldom if ever any regard given to the community's capacity to pay and the burden that is imposed on future generations.
The community's ability to pay has less to do with CPI than it has to do with income. When local government expenditure increases faster than the community's ability to pay, the community suffers.
The community is suffering now and it is disappointing that the Tasmanian Government stands by and does nothing to curb the expansion of local government expenditure when itself is trying to curb its own expenditure.
Amalgamation is just one perceived means of achieving lower rates, but it is unlikely to achieve this unless the Tasmanian Government were to legislate a direct link between Average Weekly Earning (AWE) and rates.
1 comment:
These Aldermen may have thought they were very clever to have the next Local Government elections deferred until October 2014, yes, 2014!! But electors will not forget, and once we have a radical cleanout of dead wood at both Federal and State level, we will be well-bloodied to take on these Local Government dinosaurs and clean them out too.
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