Shire of Katanning leave it until final day to announce 4pc rate rise for 2021-22

A 4 per cent rates rise and a $1.2 million commitment to the Katanning Early Childhood Hub are some of the biggest takeaways from the 2021-22 Shire of Katanning budget. After last year’s COVID-19 inspired rates freeze, councillors opted to increase rates by 4 per cent to cater for changes to regulations and secure long-term community sustainability. “There are increases beyond our control that effectively make up for the entire rate rise,” Shire president Liz Guidera said. “It is essential we get a good handle on the life and cost of our buildings going into the future — this is essential for our long-term financial planning.” The $1.2m commitment to the early childhood hub is an investment years in the making. Other big-ticket items include about $433,000 for the Piesse Lake subdivision, $349,000 for Great Southern Aged Accommodation, $223,000 for the Katanning Leisure Centre dam expansion, and $210,000 for Katanning Regional Sheep Saleyards lighting and CCTV upgrades. “The Shire of Katanning has worked hard to upgrade the town and cater for the needs of the community in the last four years,” Cr Guidera said. “We are looking forward to the community strategic planning process about to commence to gauge what the priorities are for our community going forward. “It’s an exciting time. “It will require a great deal of planning on behalf of council and staff to ensure we can deliver for Katanning’s future.” Alongside the rates rise, the budget has outlined an additional $5000 increase in the president’s allowance, to take it to $30,000, and a $1250 rise in the deputy president’s allowance. Ms Guidera, pictured with Shire chief executive officer Julian Murphy, said the rise in the allowances countered the decrease in council members from nine to seven. “Council redistributed the surplus created by the reduction of numbers to all councillors, the president and deputy as a way of acknowledging people’s service,” she said. “The cost to the community is not more, it is just distributed over fewer elected members, and better reflects the demands made on a smaller group. “The general view is that people who offer themselves to our community for service at this level shouldn’t be financially disadvantaged — especially now that there are requirements for study, professional development, a greater workload, and increased accountability. “Arguably it should have happened before this, but resourcing was always an issue. The change in numbers created an opportunity to acknowledge contribution and we hope that in the future it may provide opportunities for a wider variety of local people to serve on the Shire of Katanning.” The Shire left it until deadline day, August 31, to endorse its 2021-2022 annual budget, after most councils around the region had already submitted theirs. Mr Murphy said the 11th-hour vote gave the short-staffed financial office the “maximum allowable time”. “The Shire of Katanning has generally adopted the budget in August each year and this year was no different,” he said. “The Shire has been affected by shortages in appropriately skilled finance staff and so the maximum allowable time to prepare and adopt the budget was taken this year.” Mr Murphy said the 4 per cent rise was in line with the council’s efforts to fund its budget through sustainable and affordable rates. “There is always an opportunity of not increasing revenue from rates which impacts on council’s ability to fund the budget, however council will always endeavour to set expenditure at levels that are sustainable and affordable for the community,” he said. “This year we have utilised reserves to cover shortfalls in capital expenditure where appropriate and also reduced the amount transferred to reserves ... partly attributed to reduced revenue from previous years.”