Business owners in the Milton Ulladulla area are drawing battle lines as they prepare to fight plans to lift their rates by close to 50 per cent over the next five years.
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Several are even planning to attend an extraordinary Shoalhaven City Council meeting in Nowra on Thursday evening to voice their opposition to the move that would see business rates in places including Milton and Kings Point lifted by 20.6 per cent in 2015/16 to make up the shortfall for council reducing business rates in the Nowra central business district by 30 per cent.
Ulladulla’s central business district has been spared the rate rise contained in council’s draft budget that was approved at the council meeting held in Ulladulla on April 21, with the motion moved by Cr Patricia White and seconded by Cr Allan Baptist.
While the draft budget has been included in discussions on council’s budget and plans for infrastructure works in coming years, a rescission motion has been put forward by Cr Andrew Guile, backed by Crs Mark Kitchener and Jim McCrudden.
That rescission motion will be discussed at the extraordinary council meeting at 5pm on Thursday, and Kings Point business operator Daneen Horsfall encouraged other business people to voice their opposition.
“What they’re trying to do is just wrong,” she said.
“This is something that we have to have our say on, and the only way we will be listened to is to make sure our voices are heard.”
There was widespread opposition when about 120 people attended a meeting in the Ulladulla Civic Centre on Thursday night in which council staff outlined details of the draft budget and encouraged people to lodge submissions.
The meeting was told council’s budget plans included the 20.6 per cent rate rise for businesses outside the Nowra, Ulladulla and Sussex Inlet CBDs in 2015/16, and a proposal to lift rates across the board by five per cent above the rate-pegging limit during three successive years from 2017/18 to 2019-20.
Together they would amount to rate rises for many business operators of around 50 per cent over just five years – a prospect opposed by all who attended last week’s briefing.
That opposition came despite council staff putting together a presentation outlining why council needed to either increase its income or cut services to meet the State Government’s Fit for the Future guidelines.
That program was aimed at ensuring councils were sustainable, efficient, and effectively managed their infrastructure, council director of corporate services Craig Milburn told the meeting.
Critical in that was council’s need to address a $45 million backlog in work to bring its assets up to a satisfactory condition, particularly when council was already “spending more than we’re making,” Mr Milburn admitted.
He blamed the funding shortfall on cost shifting from state and federal governments and “30 plus years of rate pegging”, which prevented council income from keeping pace with rising costs.
However Mr Milburn stressed the rate rises were “simply a proposal – council doesn’t make a decision until June”.
But that was not enough to stem the anger from local business operators, particularly with council saying it needed more money while proposing to cut rates in the Nowra CBD.
While council staff produced figures showing how businesses in the Nowra CBD paid far higher rates than anyone else in the Shoalhaven, that was not enough to convince those at the meeting of the need for change, particularly when it was outlined the Nowra CBD streets and even footpaths were swept daily, and the public toilets were cleaned three times a day.
In contrast business operators in Kings Point said they were lucky to see a street sweeper once every few years.
That led to suggestions businesses in Milton and Kings Point would be subsidising enterprises in Nowra.