23.5%. That’s how much higher Logan rates would have to go up by if your Councillors had rubber stamped this budget.
It would have meant almost $15 per week extra for most ratepayers, but we knew many of you could not afford that.
So, by making some really tough decisions together, Councillors have avoided the biggest rate rise in our city’s history.
This is my 10th budget and I’ve never seen a Council be so disciplined.
Last week I told you about the many millions of dollars in new spending Councillors have said no to, but we didn’t stop there.
We also asked Council staff to find efficiencies across their teams, and they’ve come up with a further $31 million in savings.
Some were small and others were significant, but they all add up to mean that we could keep rates much lower than they would’ve been otherwise.
Importantly, most of these will impact Council and our staff more than the community – because we’ll be asking the staff to do more with less.
Examples including not upgrading mobile phones, slowing down the Digital Transformation Project to reduce contractor spend, and reducing professional development for staff.
It’s not all behind the scenes though – you may notice some of these measures in the community too.
The Animal Management Centre will be closing at noon (instead of 2pm) on Saturdays and the use of traffic control for small projects will be reduced (which may cause additional traffic delays around some road works). The budget for line marking renewal will be reduced, and the number of street sweeps and cleans done each year will be halved.
For every reduction in service, we considered its impact to residents against the savings to the bottom line.
None of these decisions were made lightly.
It is important to me that we are open about them and what they mean for you.
To avoid a 23.5% bottom line rate increase, we had to find serious savings.
And we have.
