- "93 per cent of urban residences will pay nil to $50 more and six per cent will pay $50 to $100 more."

Ratepayers can expect an average rate increase of 3.5 per cent after Mid-Western Regional Council passes its $71.8 million 2009/10 budget next Wednesday night.

While we won’t know individual rates until we get our first rates notices for the period, farmland rates are rising an average of 2.9 per cent and all others 4.5 per cent.

That is a political decision of the council. The other sectors have shared the transfer.

So, for example, 44 per cent of some 9692 residences will receive the average rate increase. That will take their rates to $528.15, from $510.30.

Put in another way, 93 per cent of urban residences will pay nil to $50 more and six per cent will pay $50 to $100 more.

As for businesses, 52 per cent will see an increase of nil to $50; 24 per cent will see an increase of $50 to $100 and 24 per cent will see an increase of $100 to $500.

When it comes to capital works, there are some big ticket items planned for 2009/10, including work on gravel roads, a new sewage treatment plant for Mudgee, work on the Mudgee showground; Glen Willow; moves to shore up Rylstone and Gulgong’s water supplies and a start on the Cudgegong Southbank library project.

“It is an ambitious master plan,” finance manager Clare Phelan said this week “but it’s achievable.”

She said a lot of projects that council had committed to the community were coming to fruition.

“It is a budget that has had a lot of demands placed on it but keeps council in a solid financial position.”

She said there would be a mini-budget in December to look at the five-year plan to make sure it is still sustainable as things unfold locally and globally.

Council will also indefinitely defer plans for a $1.1 million extension of its Mudgee headquarters; decrease Bellevue Estate maintenance funding to $80,000 and fast track the Bylong Valley Way rest area to two years from four.