Adelaide City Council deadlock over possible rates rise

THE Adelaide City Council is once again in deadlock over whether rates will rise in the CBD next financial year.

Exterior of Adelaide Town Hall building on King William Street in Adelaide 15 Oct 2006. flagpole median strip

THE Adelaide City Council is once again in deadlock over whether rates will rise in the CBD next financial year.

The Finance and Business Services Committee met late into Tuesday night to discuss how the Council would like the rates to be positioned as part of the budget process.

But the decision was deferred to a workshop to try to resolve an outcome that could find a rates hike of 1.75 per cent.

At the meeting, Councillor Anne Moran also moved a motion to freeze rates, which was also torpedoed.

“Our ratepayers are hurting,” she said.

“Our rates are higher than similar council areas.

“We need to get our businesses like the car parks, our golf course and others becoming profitable rather than repeatedly slugging our ratepayers who are hurting ... it’s lazy to just rely on rate increases.

“We never spend our budget so there is fat in the system.

“We need to respond to our ratepayers’ pain ... we can run the city by making ourselves a lean, mean fighting machine.”

Finance and Business Services Committee chairman, Councillor Housaam Abiad, said he was disappointed the council could not reach an outcome.

“I’m hoping through the workshop process we’ll be able to have a more robust debate on our budget process moving forward,” he said.

“It’s really crucial that we understand or expenditure first before we set the rate in the dollar or consider a rate increase.”

Cr Abiad said a rates increase could help the council catch up on years of neglected projects, costing millions of dollars to bring them up to standard.

“It’s important to note that over the past 20 years of council, core business and core projects in capital works realm and public realm have been completely neglected,” he said.

“That’s why we find ourselves in a position today where we have to spend in excess of $30 million a year for the next ten years simply to just catch up on upgrades and to bring things up to standard.

“Either previous councils decided to spend money on sexy projects and completely neglected core business or simply they didn’t raise enough money to spend on public realm infrastructure upgrades.”

Ahead of the committee meeting, Councillor Phil Martin said the council had to freeze its rates because “we’ve got more money than we know what to do with”.