On Monday 29 June, Port Phillip Councillors voted against the interests of residents and business owners by supporting the bureaucrat’s recommendation to increase rates by 2.75%. Residents of Port Phillip campaigned for not increasing rates for the new financial year while maintaining the quality and accessibility of essential services.

 

Only three of the nine Councillors supported the rates freeze, thwarting hopes for immediate financial relief amidst the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

 

For:                     Cr Buckingham, Cunsolo, Crawford, Halliday, Makin

Against:            Cr Hardy, Jay, Mears

Abstain:           Cr Thomann

 

Residents of Port Phillip applauds Crs Hardy, Jay, and Mears  (RoPP endorsed) for voting against the rates increase. Disappointingly, most Councillors voted for rate increases when rates in Port Phillip rates are excessive compared with neighbouring councils – see  https://ropp.org.au/property-rates-calculator-2/

Council have the capacity to reduce rates by bringing its spending into line with its neighbouring councils, but they choose not to do so. Only a 2% efficiency was required to avoid increasing rates. The CEO of any business should be focused on delivering operational efficiencies and should be able to find a 2% efficiency.

The City of Port Phillip is grossly inefficient as highlighted by our analysis indicating the organisation is over-staffed and top heavy relative to the Cities of Stonnington, Bayside and Glen Eira – see Budget submission https://ropp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/RoPP-2026-27-Council-Plan-and-Budget-Submission.pdf

Cr Beti Jay speaking to the 2026/27 Budget, said “the reality is it is much easier to spend money and very hard to restrain spending or strategically plan to spend it in a more efficient way. Many of you (Councillors) have been speaking about the cost-of-living crisis and speaking about how people can’t feed themselves or can’t feed their kids. But I do find it ironic that the same Councillors that are so passionately speaking about hungry people are the ones that are quite happy to pull money out of the surplus to keep spending.”

“We hear a lot about rising costs but too often the answer is higher rates. As a resident this concerns me. I have heard plenty about spending more but not enough about tightening our belt and saving in the current economic climate. Our community expects discipline and it values fairness because this is not our money, it belongs to our community and they deserve more.”

Next financial year’s rates revenue is based on the prior year’s general rates revenue plus the 2026-27 rates cap increase of 2.75% which is determined by the Victorian Government.

The relentless increase in rates revenues imposes compound growth on residents and businesses. During a cost-of-living crisis which is now in its seventh year, the only way to provide some relief to the compounding growth of rates would be for Council to implement a zero-rate increase. This would mean that Council collects the same dollar amount of rates as the prior year. Some Councils have frozen rates for one year and then recouped the paused rate rise by adding the frozen amount to the next year’s rate increase which does not help anyone except the bureaucracy.