MILDURA Mayor Simon Clemence says the council is doing everything it can to support drought-stricken Millewa farmers and was addressing rate relief as a “primary concern”.
After last month’s State Government drought relief funding announcement, the council has been promised $670,000, which has been broken into two parts — $420,000 for service support relief and $250,000 for spending on infrastructure or community building programs.
Cr Clemence said the council had formed a committee and was working with a farmer representative group, as well as government agencies, to discuss what it could do to support farmers.
He said the council had written to State Government requesting it move the $250,000 component of funding allocated for infrastructure into the service support category to be used entirely for rates relief.
“We have to get the State Government to agree that the money will be used for rate relief,” Cr Clemence said.
“They have signalled that is on the cards … I am reasonably confident it will happen.”
Cr Clemence said rates were a “big bill”, with some farmers paying more than $30,000 because of the value of their property.
“When you have no income, that is almost enough to keep your family going for a year if you’re fairly tight with your spending,” he said.
“That’s a big-ticket item for them, and if it is a big-ticket item for them then it is a big-ticket item for us to do what we can.
“In fairness to them, they aren’t looking for handouts from council, they know if we as council were to provide them with 100 per cent rate relief that would mean that other ratepayers would have to fill that void, so they don’t want to burden other ratepayers in that way.
“That’s why they have asked the State Government to provide that funding.
“We are quite happy that the State Government has stepped in and stepped up to the plate. It should work out fairly well, I think.”
Earlier this year, the government announced Mildura Council would receive $1 million drought funding to help stimulate employment for people whose work opportunities had been affected by the drought.
Cr Clemence said the council had been discussing where to spend the money, including a raft of potential projects and options, with Millewa farmers.
Among the options were employing farmers and their equipment to work on the road verge damage and erosion, which would give them the opportunity to earn an income.
“We have to do a lot of thinking around it, but we also have to make sure that the farmers are included in that and that we take on their ideas,” Cr Clemence said.
“Trying to get some projects off the ground with the million dollars is something we are really trying to tackle as expediently as we can.
“We can’t rush it in case we make mistakes and blow it, but we are in the process of working through it at the moment.”
