Council’s Mayor, Cr Graeme Scheu reminds all ratepayers that the all important close of discount will be Thursday 25th March 2010.

“A discount of 15% is in my book certainly worth chasing and I also encourage people to make sure that they get the monies into Council a few days before the close of discount to avoid missing it,” Cr Scheu said.

“We have 10 or 12 people every rate period who miss the discount because funds don’t transfer through banks in time, or cheques are in the mail.

“We just have to take a very hard line otherwise the date become irrelevant and we would be fulltime deciding the merits of various excuses for missing the discount,” he says.

Residents now have many options available to them to pay their rates.

Whilst some still like to attend a service centre in person, most are taking advantage of Billpay, Internet Banking or the services offered at Australia Post outlets. Council Director of Corporate Services, Mr Jason Quinnell says this year Council has added an option to their website which links to a secure online payment system operated by Australia Post.

The service also permits credit card payments over the phone using a toll free number.

“Although people using this service will not be dealing with Council employees, the systems should be more secure than those that Council would be able to provide,” Mr Quinnell said.

“We simply don’t have the volume of transactions to make it cost effective to put in place the latest security required to take such payments over the phone or internet, but we believe it is important that these services are available to our residents,” he said.

Most people should see little change in their rates bills from the August instalment other than the amount of water consumed.

“We noted during the meter reading in January that consumption appeared to be somewhat higher that the previous period,” Cr Scheu said said.

“The meters can take up to 4 weeks to read so not every notice includes exactly 6 months of consumption so that can impact on the amount of water used.

“It has also been hot and dry and perhaps people thought that at around one dollar for a thousand litres, town water was a cheap way to cool down,” he said.