applied to IPART for a special rate variation on top of the 2.6 per cent rate rise as pegged by the
NSW Government.
Not surprising was HCIA support for the extra rate rise given that developer contributions to infrastructure are capped.
The shortfall for their developments has to come from somewhere and that is why, after a 9.9 per cent rate rise last year, council is back again to raid the pockets of cash strapped families and pensioners. We are basically being asked to subsidise the population growth that is being forced
upon us.
The consequences of population growth are loss of lifestyle, soaring property and rent prices, upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, costly infrastructure upgrades (electricity prices for example), loss of recreational parkland, bush land, biodiversity and native wildlife, species extinction and loss of vital agricultural farmland and diminished food security, to name a few.
If you upgrade a road and then double the amount of traffic on it, have you created a better road?
Or have you wasted taxpayer dollars and left them no better off. If your hospital was struggling with three pods and you double your population, then won’t you need six pods just to be in the same position? Why would you go to all that extra cost? I know why politicians do, so they can say I delivered this, I delivered that. But as ratepayers and taxpayers, we need to say: Did I get a better service or was it just expanded to meet more people, leaving me the same or worse off and out of pocket?
Before being asked to pay for it, people should be asked if they want population growth in the
first place.
There should be no further special rate variations in Port Macquarie without having a referendum on population growth.
Name witheld
