City businesses ‘will have to pick up most of E11.3m benchmarking tab’
It will cost E5 million extra to finance the additional benchmarking and sustaining progress payroll costs. And it will cost another E6.3 million to operate the Carrigrennan waste water plant bringing the total to E11.3 million.
But Cork City Council only received 2.8 million from central government towards the additional payrolls costs, said Mr Burke.
And the city council will only be getting 800,000 from central government towards the cost of running the Carrigrennan plant.
This means that the total contribution from central government towards paying benchmarking and running the waste water plant will be 3.6m and the commercial sector will have to pick up the rest of the tab, said Mr Burke.
"It is unfair that businesses who have had no hand act or part in negotiating the benchmarking deal are now being hit to pay a large part of that bill along with the running costs of Carrigrennan," he added,
The city council will raise E9.1m from businesses next year through a 5% hike in commercial rates and introducing a new separate metered water charge that will be three times higher than this year. City manager Joe Gavin told Monday night's estimates meeting that the increase in rates will generate and extra 3 million. And the new metered water charges will generate E6.1 million.
Up until now, businesses' water charges were included in the overall rates they paid, but from next year this will be calculated separately and each business will get a meter.
This year, businesses paid E2.6m in water charges that was included in the commercial rates they paid to the council, but next year that will almost treble to E6.1m.
Cork Chamber of Commerce president Robin O'Sullivan said it was unfair that business should once again be the soft target for raising extra funds.
The chamber was briefed about these new metered water charges by city council officials earlier this year.
"This will impose serious additional costs on many companies," said Mr O'Sullivan. But a Department of the Environment spokesman said there was a 14% increase in the Local Government Fund paid to local authorities this year almost a 10% increase on what was originally expected.
There was no specific allocation in that for benchmarking, so it was up to each local authority to decide how much of that fund they used towards paying the benchmarking bill, the department spokesman added.
The minister will announce additional funds soon to help authorities pay for the operation and maintenance of waste water plants and Cork will get extra funding. Asked if the council will only get E800,000 in new funding towards Carrigrennan, the spokesman said he could not comment prior to the announcement.
