Roads, water and community facility’s: Southern Downs Regional Council adopts $37.2 million budget

The council roundtable fired up during a debate over the proposed budget, with one councillor referring to it as “champagne taste on a beer budget”. Here’s what’s in store for Southern Downs residents.

Southern Downs Regional Council has adopted its 2025-26 budget after a contested debate between councillors during the special meeting on June 25.

While the newly adopted $37.2 million Southern Downs Regional Council budget provides a focus roads, water and upgrading community facilities, it packs a hefty punch for ratepayers with an overall increase in rates of 7.4 per cent.

The 2025-26 budget was adopted during a special meeting on Wednesday which saw multiple councillors raise concerns over the significant increase.

Councillors Joel Richters, Cynthia McDonald, Russell Wantling and Ross Bartley agreed the rate rise was steep and suggested council could reconsider the necessity of completing a number of costly infrastructure projects under this year's budget.

Mr Richters said a six-million-dollar increase in this year's budget was unsustainable and did not fall within the reaches of many residents in the community.

“The residential capping of 15 per cent is going to leave many people in our small villages and communities like Maryvale, where they’ve had significant increases in land evaluations, is going to see them have very large increases in their rates this year,” he said.

Mr Richters highlighted last year’s cap of five per cent and suggested council should continue to uphold that amount.

“Experts told us last year that we would need to freeze our executive minimum rate for consecutive years to compete with other local councils and we have totally ignored the professional and expensive advice that we received during our rate review,” Mr Richters said.

Southern Downs councillors were divided over the suitability of the 2025-26 budget at a special meeting on June 25.

While councillor McDonald coined the phrase “you can’t have champagne taste on a beer budget”, suggesting council should review a number of costly items in the budget.

Mrs McDonald said council could save $760,000 just in removing what she referred to as “nice to have items”.

The items referred to included the Williams St Island removal worth $500,000, the Renewables Playground worth $180,000 and Warwick Customer Services upgrade worth $80,000.

“You can’t always have the jam and the cream and for those reasons just mentioned, I can’t support an increase of 7.4 per cent,” Mrs McDonald said.

Councillors Sarah Deane, Carla Pidgeon, Morwenna Harslett, deputy mayor Sheryl Windle and mayor Melissa Hamilton were in favour of the proposed budget, citing the increase was necessary to preserve the region for future generations.

“We can’t ignore the reality that everything is going up, inflation is touching the lives of every resident, business and household in one way or another,” Ms Pidgeon said.

“At the same time many of our critical assets (such as) our roads, facilities, water infrastructure are coming to the end of their usable lives, we are simply no longer in a position to prolong repairs and replacements.”

Ms Hamilton said the references to the consumer price index were possibly misleading, stating the CPI is something that applies to a loaf of bread and carton of milk, and is not aligned to the building cost index faced by council.

“To find savings we need to look at the operational budget and that means identifying services and cost items,” she said.

The budget was adopted as proposed and a division of councillors was noted.

RATES

Residential properties in Warwick and Stanthorpe are set to see an increase of around $120 a year in rates and utilities, while non-residential properties will see an increase of around $285 per year.

Water access charges will also see an increase of 9.25 per cent which aligns with the price path implemented in the 2023-24 financial year.

Wastewater fees will rise slightly by 3.7 per cent, with council attributing the increase to helping maintain services and investing in infrastructure.

CAPITAL WORKS

The proposed budget will see a large portion of the capital works budget dedicated to flood recovery works with an allocation of $5.2m, reseal and rehabilitation program coming in at $1.5m and resheeting program at $993,000.

More than $7m will go towards water projects including the Leslie Dam raw water pipeline worth $1.5m and smart water metering.

Significant wastewater projects include the McEvoy rising main renewal estimated at $1.2m and relining of sewer mains at $750,000.

This budget will also see the final stage of the Warwick Saleyards redevelopment, along with upgrading the WIRAC filtration system and a $5.9m investment into machinery replacement.

The full breakdown can be found on Southern Downs Regional Council’s website.