Our community is facing challenging financial and economic times.
Our city’s ratepayers have faced soaring prices at the supermarket checkout, in their electricity bills, in rent and mortgage repayments, and have seen wild fluctuations at the petrol bowser. While inflation has dropped, it doesn’t appear the year ahead will be smooth sailing.
The cost-of-living squeeze is being felt by everyone, including council and our local businesses. It was against this backdrop that council structured its 2023/24 budget – one of the hardest we have had to prepare for a long time.
We committed to delivering a budget that had minimal financial impact while maintaining our high standard of service. Equally, we are privileged to steward many intergenerational projects and it was important to consider our future generations in this process.
One of our benchmarks was to ensure the rate rise required in this budget was kept below the current Consumer Price Index for Brisbane, which sits at 7.4 per cent.
Your council has worked hard to keep the increase to the minimum general rate at $1.02 per week, or 4.65 per cent, for rating category 1a, residential owner occupiers, in the 2023/24 budget.
We have successfully kept this increase under other local government areas such as Ipswich and Moreton Bay whose increases were over five per cent.
However, with only 160,000 residents and a rate base that is 90 per cent residential, we have little opportunity to draw rates revenue from large commercial or industrial sectors. This is a stark contrast with Brisbane for example, who have a large commercial district as well as high-density high-rise living in their city.
Yet, these are the very things that make the Redlands Coast the place we love. Our naturally wonderful lifestyle and our island communities who now make up well over 10,000 people.
Through responsible financial management, council has been able to achieve a small deficit of $2.1m, which is a direct result of our commitment to delivering cost-of-living relief measures. Our 2023/24 community budget includes more than $1.5m in relief to those who pay wastewater charges, and a $500,000 Civic Support Fund that will help address critical needs in our community.
We are no doubt heading into another unpredictable financial year. And while Redland City Council is in a strong position to deliver for our community, it is more important than ever that we acknowledge the roles each level of government plays in investing in our community.
Redland City Council remains committed to working with all levels of government to ensure our community has enabling infrastructure that connects our people to education, training, employment, health care and supports a vibrant economy now and into the future.
