How the City of Ballarat’s draft 2024-25 budget affects you
From rates and roads to parking and pets – here’s how the City of Ballarat’s planned 2024-25 budget will affect you.
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The final budget for the City of Ballarat’s current councillor term will, if approved, result in increased rates and levies for residents as the city battles a “challenging economic climate”.
In the final budget before elections in October, councillors will vote whether to endorse the city’s draft 2024-25 budget on May 22.
Mayor Des Hudson called the latest budget “disciplined” and praised its “back-to-basics” approach exemplified by spending on capital road infrastructure.
The decision to raise rates by the cap of 2.75 per cent was not done “without deep consideration”, he said, but was necessary given Ballarat’s increasing population and the city’s own escalating costs.
Rates account for about 84 per cent of the city’s revenue, with the rest coming from sales and government grants.
The city may only gather revenue of $129.3m from general rates and municipal charges in 2024-25 because of the state government’s rate cap.
It expects to raise more than $132.2m with the addition of supplementary rates, which take in new properties or valuation adjustments throughout the year.
Rates are determined by multiplying the value of a house according to the Valuer-General with the amount in the dollar to be taxed based on land category, which is declared by the council.
Residential properties and farms, and rural residential properties, will have the highest percentage increase in the amount levied per dollar in 2024-25, with an added 4.82 per cent and 9.19 per cent respectively.
This means that a residential home valued at $600,000 would, in the next financial year, be up for a bill of about $1785, plus waste charges of $563 and a fire levy.
Commercial and industrial properties, while paying more in the dollar overall, will experience a lesser increase in the rate levied, with a jump of 2.37 and 1.57 per cent.
However, the total value of residential properties in Ballarat has decreased by nearly $281m, according to the budget, so despite the larger increase in rates for those properties, the city is only collecting 3.88 per cent more cash from them.
Comparatively, rural residential homes will account for roughly 23 per cent more money, farms 11 per cent, industrial properties 10 per cent, and commercial properties 8 per cent.
Cr Hudson said residents should expect “significant” increases on rates notices sent out next year because of a waste services levy and fire services levy collected on behalf of the state.
The fire levy will go up 21 per cent across the board, meaning an average increase of $28 for residential properties and $221 for farms.
An increased waste management levy of $34, or 7.4 per cent, will also apply so the city can abide by state government waste separation policy.
More increases are expected in following years.
Cr Hudson said Ballarat’s four-bin system would be implemented towards the end of this financial year.
“It’s important to understood that those costs the City of Ballarat doesn’t benefit from,” Cr Hudson said.
“We just collect them on behalf of the state and it’s money transferred to the state, yet those increases will make rate notices look exceptionally larger.
“Local government is living in a rate-capped environment, and yet here are two charges which have increased significantly well beyond the rate cap, and the local councils or local government areas collect that under their logo for the state government.
“I think it’s always diffcult to balance and have a conversation with our community - it would be far better if the state government sent out their own notices for increases for both of those and other taxes that they collect as well, rather than being able to hide behind the logos of local government areas that collect these on behalf of the state government.”
A $10.1m increase in the cost of city wages and salaries when comparing forecasts for the current financial year and the budget for the next is accounted for by $4.5m of temporarily vacant jobs in 2023-24, an increased headcount of 24.9 FTE costing $3m in 2024-25, and $2.6m going towards a 3.5 per cent wage increase, per an initial EBA offer by the city.
Registrations, fees, and fines
Waste management
Increase of $34 per property
Cat and dog registration
Increase of between $1 and $5, with kitten adoptions rising by $20
Childcare
Daily and long term day care costs increasing by 2.75 per cent, or between about $3 and $16
Pool use
Casual passes for children, adults, and families to increase by between $0.05 and $0.48
Parking fines
Increases of between $4 and $7 for some types of fines, but no change to the $76 fee for parking for a period longer than indicated
Tip services
Cost for general waste per cubic metre at Gillies St transfer station increasing by $2
Cemeteries
Burial at Learmonth and Glendaruel increasing by $30 each, making fees of $180
The numbers
– Average rate increase of 2.75 per cent
– Income of $302.9m and expenditure of $243.7m
– $122.8m capital program
– 129 per cent increase in renewal and upgrade capital works
– $20.16m loan borrowings for “intergenerational infrastructure and environmental projects”
– 31 FTE new city staff members (compared with last year’s budget), to make 874.6 FTE in total, and $10.1m more spent on employee wages
– Councillor allowances to increase by $31,000 in total
Spending at a glance
– $30.5m capital road infrastructure
– $11.1m community infrastructure
– $6.5m drainage projects
– $5.85m landfill environmental compliance works
– $5.6m basin projects
– $5.5m Art Gallery upgrades
– $4m commence construction of new animal shelter
– $1m planning Airport Runway Upgrade
– Additional $1m for footpath renewal program, $250,000 for bluestone laneways in 2024-25, and $885,000 for grave path, bridge, and culvert maintenance annually
– $650,000 budgeted for October 2024 councillor elections
Sporting facilities
– $1.89m Buninyong netball courts and cricket nets
– $1.38m Mount Clear Recreation Reserve
– $1.46m Brown Hill Recreation Reserve
– $2.5m City Oval change room design
– $1.2m Len T Fraser skate park expansion design
– $4.3m CE Brown Reserve and Learmonth ovals and hockey change rooms design
The city expects a reduction in new housing builds amid a slowdown of development applications following what chief executive Evan King called “probably the most busy” period of activity in that arena.
“Obviously 11 interest rate rises has really slowed the economy down,” he said.
“We’re seeing that happen at the moment – it’s cyclical.”
Mr King said the city would continue to look at options to divest unneeded assets from its $2.5b portfolio, such as how to use the Llanberris Athletics Reserve once a new athletics track was available at the showgrounds site.
He said he was focused on minimising the amount of allocated money being carried forward into later budgets by better planning of capital works.
“If you look at our bank balance at the end of the financial year, quite often it looks quite high,” Mr King said.
“That’s because we’ve got capital works program sitting in there that hasn’t been delivered.
“So it’s actually all allocated, so our bank account is inflated because of capital that we’ve not delivered.
“ … We want to deliver the projects that we tell our community in the year that we tell them.”
Money spent on consultants, according to the budget, will increase by more than 90 per cent to $693,000.
“We obviously supplement work and specific pieces of technical work with consultants as an organisation,” Mr Evans said, “so it does fluctuate year by year depending on what’s on the program at the time and what we need investment for, what we need support to undertake.”
The saleyards site, he said, was one situation for which a consultant was required to create a structure plan; another instance cited involved experts to be brought in to implement cybersecurity practices.
Mr King said an increase of consultants could mean decreased reliance on contractors depending on how any given work was to be resourced.
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