Barkly Regional Council is keeping in line with most Territory councils and raising its rates by five per cent for the 2023-24 financial year.

While news of higher costs is not welcome for ratepayers, Mayor Jeffrey McLaughlin said the decision by Council at its 12 May Special Meeting was unavoidable to sustain adequate service delivery in the region.

“We are well aware of the rising cost of living but that means that the costs of goods and services have increased for Council too,” said the Mayor.

“After the rates debacle last year, we engaged with consultant John Perry from the Mead Perry Group to undertake an intensive review into our rates after an exorbitant increase to the UCV (Unimproved Capital Value) lobbed some industrial property owners with an annual bill of more than 100 per cent than the previous year.” The Mead Perry Report discovered there were a number of things that went wrong last year – including a lack of consultation with ratepayers, an inappropriate approach to raising the rates and a failure to define what amount was needed before crunching the respective rates across different categories of rateable properties.

“There will now be a five per cent increase applied to all residential, commercial and industrial properties plus minimum and maximum ratings for each category.” In another positive move, Council’s Finance Team has moved from the aged accounting and purchasing programs to modern and up-to-date cloud software including CouncilWise and Approval Max, achieving improved competence through appropriate training and use of best practice in managing rates and finances.

The Declaration of Rates 2023-24 will be available in next week’s edition of the Tennant Times and on the Barkly Regional Council website at www.barkly.nt.gov.au

This article appeared in Tennant & District Times, 30 June 2023.