Griffith City Council will vote on applying for Special Rate Variation regarding next financial year's rates

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal determines a maximum limit that councils can increase rates per year, referred to as 'rate pegging.' The 2022/23 maximum limit is at a low 0.7 per cent, which caused some distress for councils in NSW.

There are exceptions by which councils can apply to increase rates above the peg, with Griffith City Council set to vote on applying for Special Rate Variation to increase rates above the limit by 1.3 per cent lifting the rate increase to two per cent.

IPART has advised that councils can apply to increase rates up to the per cent published in their delivery plan for 2022/23 up to a maximum of 2.5 per cent.

For Griffith, that means two per cent is the maximum increase that can be applied for according to the 2021 delivery plan and the budget.

The Special Rate Variation would bring the rates in line with last year's budget

The submission to council from Director of Business, Cultural and Financial Services Max Turner noted that there is the potential that without the increase, council would be unable to fund any major projects and that not applying for the increase could reflect poorly on future rate variance applications.

"The additional 1.3 per cent rate variation will provide an additional $240,000 in the 2022/23 year and a further $2.7 million approximately over the next 10 years due to the compounding effect of this one-off increase available to the rating base," notes the report that council will vote on in the upcoming meeting.

Council will meet and vote on the application on 7pm on Tuesday, April 12. A full agenda is available through council's website.

The meeting will be livestreamed through the Griffith City Council Facebook page and minutes will be posted on the Griffith City Council website at a later date.

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