COLAC Otway Shire mayor Stephen Hart says he expects ratepayers could be unhappy with a proposed 6.3-per-cent rate rise.
Mayor expects rate rise to hurt
Mayor Stephen Hart expects Colac Otway residents won't be happy with a proposed rate rise.
4 Responses to “Mayor expects rate rise to hurt”
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Ive got a really good idea of how to improve Councils .Get rid of them .! Do we really need councils like the Melton Council for instance that have gone into the Joint venture business of developing land and slugging 300% increases on the rural land owners to fund their activities or better still ,force them off their land so that they can have a cheap source of land available so that they can develop ,and what if their venture fails or has not anyone heard of land development failures and even if it does succeed ,what do they do with the money ?increase the CEO salary to over the existing 380000 ?
WAKE UP PEOPLE !
I find it typical of local government. This Shire is not as bad as other Shires. In Melton, while the CEO enjoys A salary of about 380k per year he presides over the highest rate per $ value in Melbourne,and has increased some landowners rates by a staggering 66% for some and up to 300% for others. yes its not a typo, 300% this was done without any changes to services and no increase in valuations. a new differential rate was introduced to charge this increase. councils want to be recognised as a third level of government they dont deserve it and need to concentrate on improving their efficiency. I urge all ratepayers to make your presence known, as a group you can force change.
Ian H
My husband works in the area covered by the Colac Herald and he brought home the paper tonight with the story about rate rises in Colac. I totally agree that the rate rise is unecessary especially when as ratepayers we recieve very little from Councils. Imagine your fellow Victorian ratepayers in the rural areas of the Shire of Melton when we had a rate increase of 66 – 300% in our rates with NO valuation change. Our increase was because the council needed to increase their revenue to fund their own frivolous affairs and deveopments so they slugged 430 properties!! The rest of the Shire only had a 3% rate rise! Discrimination? What do you think? As ratepayers we need to understand that Councils are NOT government even though they call themselves local Government. The Australian Constitution recognised only two tiers of Government NOT three!! This is why they want to hold a referendum later this year to acknowledge Councils as Government….imagine what they will do then!! Carefully consider your vote when this comes around! Check your rates notice and you will notice that the Council is a private corporation with an ABN number which really means they cannot actually collect taxes in the form of Council rates AT ALL!!
Regardless of which Council/Shire you reside in, be it city or country, don’t mind the rate rise if we actually saw something for the money. Our council used to give us 4 free tip disposals and 3 free hard rubbish collections each year. Now we get one free tip disposal and one free hard rubbish collection, yet the rates still go up.Would love to know where all the money collected on rates go? It is not back into the community, that’s for sure.