Councillor Rick Crouch’s persistence has paid off. After weeks of working on the DA response to the 2011 – 2012 Proposed Rates Policy, and urging the public to get more involved by submitting their objections, the city manager in not so many words told a sitting of the full council on Wednesday (23/02/2011) that he agreed with the DA’s proposal that the pensioner’s rate rebate should not be capped. Dr Sutcliffe’s said that seniors in high value houses are on a fixed income and need assistance as well. I am very pleased that the municipality appears to be rethinking their approach with this issue.
The DA has come out strongly against sections of the proposed rates policy. Our submission stated that the cap on the senior citizen rebate be removed and the rate rebate for senior citizens be determined on a sliding scale dependent on income.
For too long our senior citizens have been soft targets for this municipality and they have had no one fighting for them until now. I think they have paid their dues and we should now be helping them to live a stress free retirement. Another rebate that we should be looking at for senior citizens is that if they are not rate payers but are renters there should be a subsidy offered by the municipality to assist in their rent payment (dependent on income). We have to start thinking about the people we serve.
Some other interesting pieces of information that came out of Dr Sutcliffe’s budget presentation were the following proposals;
- 22% electricity tariff increase
- 6.5% sanitation tariff increase
- 6.5% solid waste tariff increase
- 9.5% tariff increase on residential water
- 12.9% tariff increase on commercial water
- 6.5% increase on rates
I urge all residents and ratepayers to be more involved in these processes, you cannot just sit back when these issues come up for public comment and once they are implemented start complaining, we have to be less apathetic and more proactive. The public along with opposition politicians can make a difference as shown here. |
