Residents Speak Up as Bendigo Council Weighs Rate Rise and Service Cuts

Bendigo ratepayers will front the City of Greater Bendigo council chamber on Wednesday night with a clear message: a proposed 5.8 per cent general rate increase for the 2026–27 financial year is too steep, and the services being quietly trimmed to balance the ledger are ones families depend on daily.

The stakes are high right now because the council's draft Annual Plan and Budget closes to public submissions on July 11, leaving residents less than a fortnight to put their concerns on the record. Councillors are expected to vote on the final budget at the July 23 ordinary meeting. For a mortgage-holder in California Gully already navigating higher grocery bills and elevated interest rates, an extra $180 or more on the annual rates notice — the rough average impost on a median-valued Bendigo property sitting around $460,000 — is not an abstract figure.

"We went to two community drop-in sessions and both times the room was packed," one long-term resident of Strathdale said at Wednesday's pre-meeting gathering outside the Bendigo Town Hall on Hargreaves Street. "People are not against the council needing money. They're against feeling like they had no say in where it goes."

Libraries, Pools and Potholes

The specific cuts drawing most heat are proposals to reduce operating hours at the Kangaroo Flat Library on Mackenzie Street and to defer resurfacing works on several streets in the Eaglehawk precinct. The Eaglehawk community, about seven kilometres north of the CBD, has one of the city's higher proportions of age-pensioner households, and local advocates say reduced bus frequency and deteriorating road surfaces compound each other.

Bendigo Community Health Services, which runs primary care programs from its offices on Hargreaves Street and in Kangaroo Flat, has submitted a formal response to the draft budget warning that service reductions at Kangaroo Flat Library — which hosts health literacy workshops and a mental health first aid drop-in — could push vulnerable clients toward its already stretched GP clinics. The organisation fielded 41,000 patient contacts in the 2024–25 financial year, and its submission notes that community infrastructure "acts as a first filter before people reach the clinical system."

The Bendigo Stadium on View Street is also caught in the budget squeeze. A planned upgrade to the stadium's changeroom facilities, originally listed for completion in the 2026 calendar year, has been pushed back to at least mid-2027 under the revised capital works schedule. Sporting clubs using the stadium have been notified by letter.

What Community Members Are Asking For

Residents who spoke outside the Town Hall ahead of Wednesday's meeting weren't uniform in their demands. Some want the rate increase dropped to the 3.5 per cent figure recommended by the state government's rate cap guidance. Others say they accept a higher rise but want transparency — a published, line-by-line account of where every additional dollar lands.

A group of parents connected to the Girrimundi Child and Family Centre in Strathfieldsaye has collected 340 signatures on a petition asking the council to quarantine funding for its early childhood programs from any efficiency review for at least two years while a broader service review is completed. They plan to deliver the petition to the council offices on Lyttleton Terrace before the July 11 deadline.

La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, one of the city's largest employers with roughly 2,000 staff and students on site in any given week, has a direct stake too. The university's community engagement team has flagged concerns about proposed cuts to the regional arts grants program, which has co-funded student-led public art projects along the Rosalind Park precinct in recent years.

Residents wanting to make a formal submission have until 5 pm on July 11. Written submissions can be lodged through the City of Greater Bendigo website or dropped in person at the Lyttleton Terrace civic offices. The July 23 council meeting, where the final vote takes place, is open to the public and begins at 6 pm.