There were a few bumps and bruises, but the SDRC 2025/26 budget passed by a single vote last week.
Debate in the Stanthorpe chambers vividly displayed the divergence of views in council. There was the faction that called for fiscal restraint, which included Cr Bartley, Cr McDonald, Cr Richters and Cr Wantling. Then there were the ‘progressives’, keen to invest in the Southern Downs, which included all the rest of the council.
Putting together and passing a council budget is always reasonably contentious. This one was no different.
The pro-investment group of councillors were rallied by Mayor Melissa Hamilton who says she’s proud of a budget that “invests” rather than “starves” the shire.
Cr Richters led the charge for austerity, moving an early amendment to cap the overall budget increase to 4.5 percent and capping residential rates categories 1 and 2 at 5 percent.
The argument for austerity – or restraint, at least – was based on the CPI of 2.7 percent and the local government cost index of 2.9 and 3.7 percent, far below the rates first increase of about 7 percent.
“People who have the lowest land values in our community are the people, more times than not, who are having the largest increases in their rates, and that’s unfair,” Cr Richters said, amongst many other arguments to cap rises in budget or rates.
Cr Harslett mocked Cr Richters “extensive research” saying that “there are nine councillors in this room that have done extensive research” and to imply that he knows better than staff and colleagues “is a tad arrogant, actually”.
Cr McDonald immediately asked Cr Harslett to withdraw the last sentence, which Cr Harslett did and later apologised to Cr Richters for the comment.
Cr McDonald also argued for a tighter budget based on cost-of-living pressures for residents and she listed several projects she thought could easily be trimmed including the removal of untidy street islands in Warwick to the tune of $500,000; a “renewables playground” for $180,000; a customer services upgrade in Warwick for $80,000.
“These are what I consider to be ‘nice to have items’ not immediate necessities,” she said, stressing, that she was presenting “facts and figures”.
Mayor Hamilton later pointed out that the “renewables playground” was a project of the previous council and that the play equipment has been sitting in storage and the cost was to complete the project.
Both Cr McDonald and Cr Bartley questioned whether there were too many new hires at council.
“Our staff has risen, there’s no doubt about that,” Cr Bartley asserted, which the Mayor later refuted.
“I find the budget increase completely unacceptable,” was Cr Bartley’s position. He mentioned other savings that were possible including getting the State government to fund a bigger carpark for the hospital and staggering the $500,000 for removing traffic islands.
Cr Sarah Deane and Cr Carla Pigeon both made extensive pro-budget statements. Cr Deane thought that as far as investing in improved infrastructure, “we can’t afford to keep kicking the can down the road; some of our projects have been delayed for too long and the longer we wait the more expensive they become.”
Cr Pigeon liked that the budget is “future focused, committed to growth, sustainability and long-term progression”.
Cr Russell Wantling pointed out that there is “$26 million in carry over projects that we didn’t deliver last year” and that the proposed budget is setting up council for “another year of under delivery”. He started to describe “$900,000 in additional wages” for two general manager roles at which point the Mayor jumped in with a point of order and corrected him.
“There was no new allocations for new general managers. The amount has not changed, the number has not changed, it’s not a new allocation.”
The correction seemed to run Cr Wantling’s arguments slightly off path but he finished his statement.
The pro-austerity councillors seemed to take offence that the other side – at some point – had described the rates increases as the cost of a cup of coffee per week.
“It’s far more than a cup of coffee a week, believe me” , Cr Bartley said, at least for rural producers. Cr McDonald also disparaged the “cup of coffee” analogy.
At one point during the debate, Mayor Hamilton pointedly thanked Cr Harslett, Cr Deane, Cr Windle and Cr Pigeon “for joining with me” at the public engagement sessions on the budget.
“We hear a lot about the need to have open sessions with our community and I think its really good that some of us see the benefit of being at those sessions to listen to what the community has to say.”
Cr Richters was having none of that.
“You went around the room and specifically pointed out the councillors that attended the consultation. Can I just point out that every councillor in this room, other than you, I suspect, Madam Mayor, found out about the public consultation via the media. It wasn’t discussed with us before it was announced to the community…it was just dictated to us.”
Mayor Hamilton stood her ground.
“Those [dates] went in my diary the same time as everyone else; yes, they were organised very late in the day this year…I had other things that had been prearranged but I decided the budget had to take top priority and I cleared my calendar.”
Cr Richters also berated his “invest and spend” colleagues over the recommendations of a paid consultant who last year told council “that we would have to freeze our general minimum rate for some years for our council to be competitive in our region; we have totally ignored the professional and the expensive advice that we received.”
Cr Richters also claimed that “ no councillor in this room has been provided with the operational budget for next year” so “how are we supposed to be identifying which particular items” could use cutting back “when none of us in this room have actually seen the document”.
“That is untrue,” the Mayor said. “The operational budget is in the public agenda papers which we have and which all councillors have had; we have had months off opportunity to ask questions on the budget and to talk through options with staff.”
The Mayor later told the Town & Country Journal that there was no such consultant that gave that advice during the budget process last year.
One thing that every councillor in the room agreed on was to thank staff for all of their effort to put together a difficult budget.
The budget passed with Crs Wantling, Bartley, Richters and McDonald voting against adoption and Crs Windle, Deane, Harslett, Hamilton and Pigeon voting in favour.
