Message from the Mayor

Central Highlands Regional Council has adopted a $292 million budget, outlining its focus for our 13 communities in 2023-2024. This budget reflects the goals and priorities that underpin our five-year corporate plan and is the fourth and final budget in this term of council.

This budget is our commitment to prioritise and deliver for all our communities – it is a big task with unique challenges.

This council, your council, provides many services across an area that is the size of Tasmania and reliably maintains a pool of infrastructure assets valued at approximately $1.7 billion.

While the provision of some of our services is not always visible or promoted, they are all essential to make this a healthy, safe, inclusive and liveable region.

This has been a challenging budget to deliver. Council is operating in an environment of high inflation and shortages of labour, materials and suppliers. The Australian economy is currently experiencing that same persistent higher inflation, rising interest rates and slow growth.

It is these broader factors which are impacting our residents and contributing to cost of living pressure to household budgets.

This budget has had to carefully balance the expectations of our communities, the region’s progress and our fiscal responsibility to remain financially sustainable.

General rates

General rates increase

Council has made a conscious decision to keep general rate increases to a minimum and has maintained them at the same level that was forecast in our long-term financial plan. These increases are below CPI inflation which is currently reported at just over 7%.

Next year, residential, rural and commercial sector general rates will increase by an average of 3% and the increase for the coal mining sector will be 4%.

Rate cap

Residents in the rural sector, who experienced large land valuation increases in the last region-wide revaluation program, may experience higher increases than the average. While the impact on each individual rural ratepayer will be different, the increase will be no more than 10%. This reflects the application by council of a cap for the rural sector to ensure that you will pay no more than a 10% increase on your last bill. This cap is significantly less than the 30% cap that was forecast for 2023-2024 in our long-term financial plan.

Rating category changes

Council has undertaken detailed reviews of its resource sector rating categories as part of the budget development this year. These categories include coal mining, gas production and workers’ accommodation, which will all be rated next year under new frameworks. As a result, they will experience higher increases than other ratepayers.

The resource sector rating categories had not been reviewed for a number of years. The new rating models are consistent with the characteristics of the land and reflect the impact of costs imposed by these industries on council’s assets and services. Council values the benefit that the coal mining and gas sectors, including the associated support facilities, bring to our region, and has already informed all companies of the changes.

Utility charges

Utility charges, for refuse, water supply and sewerage services, will be subject to higher increases than general rates, although refuse and sewerage will still come in under CPI inflation.

The associated service provision of waste disposal, transfer station operation and recycling activities have been subject to significant cost pressures. Refuse charges will increase overall by 5.5% next year after maintaining annual increases at 3% for several years now.