How our city’s rates stack up

RATEPAYERS were hit with a 1.5 per cent rate rise in Cairns Regional Council’s 2019-20 Budget amid much fanfare about the spike being just a modest blip in line with CPI.

Now the council’s numbercrunchers have compared the increase against other local governments across Queensland with a population base greater than 100,000.

Finance manager Jason Ritchie said the study benchmarked four categories.

Residential properties (excluding strata and flats) paying the minimum rate, which represented 21 per cent of homes, were studied first followed by houses with a valuation of $190,000, which was the median valuation for the regional council area.

Next the study compared all houses with the median valuation within their own local government area.

Finally, it compared strata title properties paying the minimum rate – which represented 88 per cent of strata properties in Cairns.

“This is an annual report that we produce to try and provide some clarity to Cairns residents about how their rates compare to other Queensland councils,” he said.

For the most part, Cairns residents paid the lowest rates out of any of the 12 areas.

“We placed lowest in all categories with the exception of the $190,000 valuation category, in which we were second only to Brisbane,” Mr Ritchie said. “So that’s a very strong result.”

Division 1 Cr Brett Moller said it was a pleasing result.

“Given the budget we’ve just handed down with about a 1.5 per cent increase for 70 per cent of our ratepayers it just shows, financially, that we’ve been very prudent and we’re delivering good bang for the buck here,” he said.

A report to the council echoed the sentiment.

“The results of the comparison indicate rates and utility charges within the Cairns Regional Council area are very much at the lower end of the comparison to other local government areas with populations greater than 100,000,” it said.