A year on from the water rates changes in Mount Isa which introduced two-part tariffs based on usage and council is still working on fine tuning the charging methodology and dealing with "anomalies".
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Mayor Joyce McCulloch told the North West Star they had been doing consultation with various water stakeholders including real estate agents and how the charges might be passed on to rental properties.
"The real estate agents are supportive of the charging methodology but there were just a few things they found difficult in implementing it," Cr McCulloch said.
"There's a lot more work on their side to have to implement it, so (it's about) how can council work with them to reduce their administration load for this."
Cr McCulloch said the real estate agents were appreciative of the fact Council was asking them for help in coming up with a solution.
"As I said to them this last 11 months has been absolutely incredible because there are a lot anomalies jumping out at us," she said.
There are a lot anomalies jumping out at us
- Cr Joyce McCulloch
"For instance there have been normal households that have two into them that had two feeds into them, or there were people that had three accesses and didn't even know that and they only require one.
"There's also people that had big water meter connecting sizes and they only require smaller ones so there was a lot of learnings out there for council."
Cr McCulloch said Council knew they didn't have all the data in place but there was learnings for the community as well.
Mount Isa City Council CEO Sharon Ibardolaza said that once the stakeholder sessions were complete, Council would collate all the data and talk to participants again.
"We will then report back to the community on what sorts of ideas we talked about and what Council will consider, could be something to change the water charges next year," Ms Ibardolaza said.
"This would be something we would need to feed into budget."
Ms Ibardolaza said the two-part tariff had been positively received and would continue.
"The (consumption charge) gives control back to users, this is more about what we can do with access charges," she said.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
