Tamworth council special rate variation, what happens now?

Council staff will spend the next four weeks poring through thousands of public submissions and reviewing concerns raised at the in-person consultation sessions held around the region.

Based on this feedback, staff will weigh the concerns of the community against council's "grim" financial future, and form a professional opinion on whether or not the rates increase should proceed.

The staff's recommendation will then be presented in a report for councillors to vote on at their next meeting on November 28, 2023.

"Council will not make any comment until the report is publicly available on the Friday before the meeting," a council spokesperson told the Leader.

At their November meeting, councillors will decide whether to proceed with an application to the state regulator, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART).

Before this happens, the Tamworth Regional Residents and Ratepayers Association (TRRRA) has set up a community campaign called 'Figure it out TRC' to pressure the local government into giving up on the rate rise.

The association argues council has not done enough to cut spending, is calling the council's approach to consultation "questionable," and says a large proportion of lower-income ratepayers - particularly those on fixed incomes - will not be able to afford the rate rise.

Tamworth Regional Council has previously said it's saving $7.8 million per year by cutting costs and received a further $3.2 million in one-off savings in recent years, and Tamworth's mayor Russell Webb said the proposed rate rise is "certainly not extreme" when compared to other neighbouring councils.

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If councillors decide in November to go through with the application to IPART, the application will be lodged in or before February 2024, and the state regulator will embark on its own community consultation.

'Figure it out TRC' has already committed to lobbying IPART against the proposal should it get to that point.

One of the major components of IPARTs assessment will be whether the state regulator believes Tamworth ratepayers have the capacity to pay a rate rise which would put average residential rates up by $221.50 in the next financial year and $212.82 the year after.

Once its assessment has been made, IPART is expected to announce the outcome of the application in May or June 2024, with any approved increase to apply to rates from July 2024.

Council policy prevents staff from answering the Leader's enquiries into the results of the community consultation period until its report becomes publicly available.

However, a recent report on council's budget reveals the local government has spent at least $30,000 on community consultation for the proposed rate increase.

This money was spent on print, TV, radio and social media advertising, though the exact amounts - and the overall total - will not be publicly known until after the November council meeting.

As for the in-person consultation sessions, community feedback was a mixed bag ranging from curiosity to outright animosity, with hundreds attending sessions in Manilla and Barraba and a similar turnout in Nundle and Moonbi.

The two sessions in Tamworth itself attracted a much smaller turnout in comparison, with only a handful of ratepayers in attendance at each.

In addition, the 'Figure it out TRC' campaign has started a petition asking council to abandon the 36.3 per cent Special Rate Variation.

The petition has garnered more than 500 signatures thus far.

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