Media Response |

- City of Ballarat Chief Executive Officer Justine Linley

Financial sustainability is a basic for any business, any household and, for that matter, any tier of government.

In the broadest sense for local government, it means that Council is capable of funding the publicly provided service needs of the community. It means that we need to be thinking not only about the needs of today, but importantly about the legacy that we leave and not to unduly compromise or burden future generations.

We also need to be mindful that rating levels and rating categories, and fees and charges are in line with the community’s capacity to pay.

Ballarat is ranked in the middle to lower end of all rural and regional councils in terms of the rate in the dollar.

The average rate assessment per resident is just over $900.

Some 42 of the 79 Councils in Victoria have per capita rates over $1000 and some eight between $1500 and $2000 per head of population.  (Source: MAV Victorian Local Government Rates Survey)

It is a balancing act between affordable rating levels/rating categories versus increasing community/business needs and demands.

With a local population over 105,000 servicing a regional population of 230,000, the City of Ballarat covers a geographic area of 738 km2, with over 1,400kms of  roads, almost 100,000 street trees, 93 sports grounds, 325 parks and reserves, over 600 buildings including town halls, some community halls, cemeteries, child care centres, kindergartens, toilet blocks, sheds, pools, stadiums, and 559 outdoor statues, monuments and art works just to name a few.

So, what would all this cost to replace? The answer is $1.9 billion.

Clearly Council cannot replace this in one year. .Each year the City of Ballarat requires $83.4 million towards the repair and renewal of these existing assets, let alone upgrade or build new. We currently have an annual infrastructure renewal gap of $40 million. This means we don’t have sufficient income to look after what we have already.

Rates – be they residential, recreational, commercial or industrial – are quite simply a property tax, just like every other tax levied by the state or federal governments.

Yet the distribution of the tax dollar is very unfair.

From every dollar raised by tax in Australia, of which rates is but one part, 82 cents goes to the federal government, 16 cents to the state government and only three per cent to local government.

The City of Ballarat has a wide range of rate categories including commercial, industrial, residential, rural residential, farm and recreational. These categories are often referred to as “differentials”. 

The rate differentials effectively determine the size of the slices in the rates pie. They do not determine the size of the actual pie: that is set by the state government as part of its Fair Go rates scheme.

In Ballarat the rating differentials, or categories, have largely remained unchanged for almost 20 years. In other words, the proportion of the overall pie paid by residents or paid by commercial businesses has remained the same.

Commercial and industrial rates are charged at a slightly higher rate than residential rates in Ballarat. Yes, this category of rates is higher than those in our regional city neighbour of Bendigo. But equally, a resident in Bendigo pays on average almost $200 more each year on their residential rates than a resident in Ballarat. If we lower the commercial and industrial rate portion of the pie, we would need to increase the residential portion to balance this out.

It is clear the City of Ballarat’s commercial and industrial rate is not deterring business from investing in the municipality at all, in fact the evidence is the contrary.

More businesses are setting up in Ballarat each year.

In 2017, there were 8319 businesses in Ballarat, 300 more than in 2016.

This included 82 new food premises, with 795 total food premises licenses issued last financial year.

Currently there are 45,000 people employed in Ballarat, with employment growing at an average rate of 3.3% per year over the past five years.

Ballarat’s unemployment rate is currently at a low 4.2% below the Victorian average of 5.4%.

In the most recent available data, Ballarat’s Gross Regional Product in 2017 was $6.5 billion, a significant contributor to the Victorian and Australian economy, up from $5.5 billion in 2016.

Ballarat remains a preferred city for business and for people to live.