Council
9 October, 2026
Consultant paints grim picture of Yass Valley’s financial position
Yass Valley residents are staring down the barrel of a massive rates hike as council struggles to get back on track financially.
Yass Valley residents are staring down the barrel of a massive rates hike as council struggles to get back on track financially.
Graham Jarvis from the AEC Group presented a grim picture of council’s financial position when he presented at a financial sustainability forum on Wednesday afternoon.
He believes the council has little option but to apply to the Independent Pricing and Administrative Tribunal (IPART) for a Special Rate Variation (SRV) and to slug ratepayers with a 76.55 per cent rate increase over four years from 2026/27.
Council will discuss its options at an extraordinary meeting next Wednesday (October 14).
The business paper for the meeting still hasn’t been published on council’s website despite residents being advised it would be available on Thursday (October 8).
Council will not be making a decision next week on whether or not to increase rates – only on whether or not it will start engaging with the community.
Mr Jarvis told councillors that socio-economic profiling shows that Yass Valley ratepayers have the capacity to pay increased rates, but there are some ‘vulnerable community groups’ – particularly pensioners – that will need to be considered in any council decision-making.
Even if councillors decide to apply for an SRV, the final decision will rest with IPART.
IPART can choose to accept council’s application in full or to approve a smaller increase.
Its decision will be informed by community feedback from council’s engagement process and from IPART’s own community engagement if council decides to proceed with the application.
Mr Jarvis said the rate increase could be introduced all at once – with a 59.70 per cent increase in the first year followed by a rate-pegged increase of 3.4 per cent over the following years, taking the total cumulative increase to 76.55 per cent.
The increase could also be staged over two to four years but council would lose a significant amount of revenue through a staged approach.
The loss would range from almost $4.5 million for the two-year option to just over $9 million for the four-year option.
Mr Jarvis told councillors they would need to find an extra $8.3 million in 2027/28 to maintain its infrastructure (assets) and fiscal (cash) capital.
He said this was equivalent to rate rise of 56 per cent above the expected rate peg of 3.7 per cent – or a total increase of 59.7 per cent.
But he warned that a rate rise on its own would not be enough – and certainly not enough to fix council’s financial problems in the short term.
He said council would also need to continue to look for opportunities to improve efficiency and service delivery.
He said council would also need to look at other ways of ‘closing the sustainability gap’ including selling land and increasing fees and charges.
Mr Jarvis said the additional revenue from an SRV would enable council to pay down its debt and to fund projects and services identified as critical or high priority.
He said it would it take years for council to address its asset renewal backlog and warned that it had little capacity to absorb further cash pressures or to deal with unplanned events.
Council’s road network has been identified as a particular problem with a recognised backlog of critical maintenance.
A recent National Transport Research Organisation (NTRO) report identified a $17.4 million shortfall in annual funding for roads and bridges based on 2025/26 prices.
If council spends the next 10 years addressing the roads maintenance backlog, other classes of assets including buildings, footpaths and recreational facilities are likely to require an increased portion of the available capital works program the following decade.
Mr Jarvis acknowledged that council had taken a number of steps over the past 12 months to improve its financial position.
“The lemon has definitely been squeezed over the past 12 months,” he told councillors.
Nevertheless, he said without immediate action council’s capacity to maintain current service levels was at serious risk and it may have to look at reducing them.
Mr Jarvis said financial sustainability would only be achieved through “hard work and hard decision-making”.
He said it would also require a “well-managed approach to risk”.
· Council’s extraordinary meeting will commence at 4pm next Wednesday (October 14) in the council chambers. The meeting will be open to the public and will also be livestreamed on council’s YouTube channel.
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