Flinders Shire Council has delivered its 2020-21 budget which will see a three per cent rate increase across the shire.
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Mayor Jane McNamara said the rates rise was mainly due to the infrastructure in the shire.
"I know most people don't want their rates to go up, but our total rates and charges for the Flinders Shire actually account for 9.1 per cent of council's total operating revenue," Cr McNamara said.
"Own source income - that is fees, charges, interest rentals - is 14.1 per cent of the total revenue, our external operating grants account for 43.8 per cent and 42.2 per cent is external contract works, like roads funding.
"So rates make up a very small percentage of our total revenue, the total rates and charges is $4.4m, and we are looking to have a very small surplus of $500,000."
The council has assigned $2m towards rural shire roads.
"This is an increase of $500,000, for maintenance of rural roads," Cr McNamara said.
"We have about 1800 kilometres of dirt and gravel roads so we usually have a budget of $1.5m, but we have put more in this budget to do some betterment projects on these roads."
Cr McNamara said the economic development of the shire was continuing with a number of ongoing projects.
"We continue to improve infrastructure to support our beef and northern industries - shire roads including the Hughenden meatworks and feedlot," she said.
"The 15 mile Intensive Irrigation Project is now in the hands of the investors, but we do have stage two of the project that we want to get up and running. So that is to develop the other half of the 15 mile, so it too can become productive.
"We have a Strategic Water Plan for the Flinders Shire and that involves, the water needs for our horticulture, irrigation and agriculture projects. In this budget we have put aside $300,000 for that, because we have two licenses from the river which total 6000 megalitres but we don't have something to store it in, it just flows past our door. In this we are building a second water tank for the town of Hughenden which totals to $4.78m.
"There is stage two of the industrial estate. At the moment it is starting to come to life which is nice to see as stage one took a while to get some traction. We did get some State Government funding to help develop the industrial area."
Cr McNamara said another new project factored into this year's budget was for the redevelopment of the Flinders Discovery Centre.
"We have put money aside from the last Works for Queensland for the re-development of the Flinders Discovery Centre," she said.
"We've had that in planning for a while, but we were waiting on some money. Stage one will include the site clean up of two businesses that we bought adjacent to our Discovery Centre. They're old buildings and we will build a similar shed to the one we have right beside it so then we will develop that into the interim into mobile displays for artifacts, art and crafts and exhibitions.
"We will also complete the Recreational Lake this year. We have put money aside to finish the cementing of the path around it and put some more solar lighting around it. The lake costs are a lot less then what we thought it would be on an annual basis. We originally thought it would be around $500,000 a year but it has come back around $350,000 a year, in just operating and maintenance costs.
"We also have a good program on sealing of roads, town streets and footpaths."
Cr McNamara said council had received a burst in their contracts due to works in the region.
"There is the $8.45m bridge across the Flinders River, $7.04m Torrens Creek - Aramac Road and $9.1m Kennedy Developmental Road.
"There are a lot of projects for the 2020-21 year, the council workforce is going to be very stretched to get all these projects complete."
Some locals can expect a change in their rates this year, following the reevaluation of properties in the shire.
"It has really thrown a spanner in the works," Cr McNamara said.
"Some of the rural evaluations were an average of 36 per cent, but some evaluations vary from 20-100 per cent. Also residential properties in town decrease by 20-30 percent and industrial properties usually increase by 10-20 per cent.
"But these evaluations really created a lot of inequities within our rating base and headaches for our finance team."
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