Local leaders take ratepayer pain straight to the top during state inquiry

Tamworth mayor Russell Webb and Gunnedah mayor Jamie Chaffey jointly addressed a state government inquiry as representatives of the Country Mayors Association (CMA) during a hearing at the Tamworth Town Hall on Thursday morning.

Both mayors fired off a familiar refrain: grant funding is too small, too inconsistent, and too city-centric.

"The limited amount of money we generate from rates is nowhere near enough to be able to provide the services our communities expect," CMA chair and Gunnedah mayor Jamie Chaffey said to the media.

"If the [funding] model was to change and was consistent - whether it be based on population, size of roads, or some other methodology - to deliver annualised funding rather than grant opportunities, we'd be able to follow our 10-year plans and that would take a lot of the risk out."

Cr Chaffey said regional councils across NSW could incur as much as $2 billion of debt this year just to fix their roads.

Both he and Tamworth mayor Russell Webb said it's a good sign to see the state government come out to the country, holding hearings in Tamworth, Lismore, and Dubbo.

"They're actually going into regional centres to get a feel for what people are thinking, that's a positive. The message we're trying to get across from Country Mayors is that all councils across regional NSW are doing it tough and suffering," Tamworth mayor Russell Webb said.

Both mayors told the inquiry regional councils have increasingly needed to rely on special rate variations to cover the cumulative impact of year-on-year budget shortfalls.

"You either do an amalgamation, sell assets off, or do a special rate variation. Effectively they're the only three options," Cr Chaffey said to the inquiry.

Gunnedah's mayor later told the media there's a "human cost" every time a council applies for a special rate variation.

"Within any community you've got conflict everywhere. You've got bill shock for people who simply can't afford the 20, 30, or in some places up to a 100 per cent special rate variation," Cr Chaffey said.

"That's not acceptable and we desperately need to make sure there is change to make sure there's no requirement for a special rate variation."

Tamworth's mayor said that pain is all-too-familiar for our ratepayers and councillors after the latter approved a controversial rate rise earlier this week.

"The flak our current councillors are getting for having to go and support a rate variation, the comments being thrown around, you wonder why people even put their hand up for local government when that happens.

"The state government needs to take note of that, because what's going to happen in the future is good people who could deliver great outcomes for councils aren't going to put their hands up."

Cr Webb said he predicts a "wave of councils" will apply for special rate variations once they're safe from facing an election, and since they waited they'll need bigger increases than Tamworth Regional Council's two-year 36.3 per cent rise.

Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) general manager Paul Bennett and chief financial officer Rami Abu-Shaqra also answered questions from the inquiry.

"Tamworth Regional Council has just completed the onerous and stressful task of a special rate variation process to increase our general fund rates by a total of 36.3 per cent over the next two years," Mr Bennett said to the inquiry.

"The complexity of that process and the extremely detailed financial analysis required to be undertaken to demonstrate our need to IPART has laid bare the current and future challenges faced by Tamworth Regional Council in particular, and by local government generally."

The general manager said he's "not here to play politics," but it's a fact that grant funding has dried up in the last 12 months.

"We have found it very hard to attract grant funding recently. In fact in only the last week, we had submitted four very strong projects under the Get NSW Active program, and we missed out on all four," Mr Bennett said.

"We were a bit astounded as to why we missed out. We did an analysis and found that National seats got zero allocation out of that grant program and $29 million went to current Labor seats."

TRC has been aggressively expanding its walking and cycling paths since 2021. In 2022 it received funding for 14 active transport projects through Get NSW Active.

In 2023 only one project was granted funding.

But Mr Bennett also said the need for the recent special rate variation comes from a problem that extends back further than both governments.

He described the rate rise as a "correction" to the "underlying issues" in the overall system, echoing the comments Cr Webb and Cr Chaffey made earlier in the morning.