Describing the community consultation process as inadequate, she also urged councillors to consider the Covid environment.
“This will have catastrophic economic effects on our community, our businesses will be forced to forward the increases in rents and businesses are already struggling in this area,” she said.
“There should be more advocacy against this (State) Government for what they did to the two councils to merge us.”
Also opposing the rate hike, David Reynolds said ratepayers were having to foot the bill for past council decisions.
“While I appreciate the value in the effort the council does, the financial situation that we perpetually find ourselves in, is being asked for rate variations and increases,” he said.
“What faith should the community have in further special rate variations addressing the issues, when there’s such a sorry history of previous variations not addressing them?”
