Draft Revenue and Rating Strategy

Introduction

We invited community members to review and make submissions on our draft Revenue and Rating Strategy.

The updated strategy had been developed with input from a community working group, the findings of a community survey and consideration of State Government guidelines, better practice and legislative changes, including the Victorian Government’s 2020 Rating Review as well as the Local Government Legislation Amendment (Rating and Other Matters) Bill 2022.

As a result of the consultation, benchmarking, and review of state government guidance there had been a number of changes proposed in the draft strategy.

Proposed changes

Indigo Shire’s rating settings are not dissimilar to other rural councils and have served the Council well.

The community survey and community working group did not uncover any burning issues or significant weaknesses with the current settings.

However, this process has uncovered some areas that could be improved to make the system fairer. The main changes being proposed in this update are;

• The ability for property owners (>2 ha) to apply for primary producer status and therefore have their rates calculated using the Rural 1 (75%) differential.

• The increase in the automatic Rural 1 designation from 40 ha to 50 ha. This places more properties into the ‘rural living’ group (at 90% differential) unless they are genuine farming operations.

Overall, these changes align with Council’s principle of supporting farming, and the protection of viable farming land from inappropriate residential development.

The remainder of the strategy (vacant land, commercial, etc) was assessed and found to be appropriate.

What we heard

The draft strategy was endorsed for public exhibition at the April 2024 Council meeting for a period of nine weeks.

Submissions are currently being collated.