Budget praised

Shellharbour City Council General Manager Brian Weir has praised the 2007/08 budget despite imposing the second rate rise on residents in the past two years.

After receiving a 9.5 percent rate increase in last year's budget, Shellharbour residents have now been slugged with another 3.4 percent rate rise after councillors voted to accept the maximum rise as set by the state government.

"The Minister has allowed for inflation and items like fuel costs when setting the limit," Mr Weir said. "We have got to take this increase otherwise we will be forced to go backwards.

"Shellharbour is certainly a growing area and we need to invest a lot of money into the community to ensure that we continue to move forward. Obviously we are trying to maintain and provide a broad range of services."

A large percentage of the $56 million budget is focused on council's current asset restoration program, a very important scheme according to the General Manager when you take into consideration the region's growing population.

"This is obviously another very busy year for council as you would expect," he said. "The asset restoration program is obviously a priority but there is also around $4 million in works that we have carried over from the current year (2006/07) on top of the $56 million in the budget.

"There is a lot of work to be done and we are pretty happy with the way the budget has turned out."