The City of Greater Geelong wants your feedback on its 2021-2022 rating strategy.
The City’s CFO, Karen Olesnicky, briefed the Geelong Manufacturing Council team last week on the current approach to financial planning and some potential future approaches.
Ms Olesnicky said the City was keen to hear the views of industrial ratepayers as part of their consultation which closes in December.
Have your say here – https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6439800/Revenue-and-Rating
The City’s 2021-22 annual budget assumes income of over $268 m from rates and charges. The current distribution has residential ratepayers contributing 58% towards this. It is proposed that over time, this proportional contribution will be increased relative to commercial and industrial.
The medium and long-term strategy of the City is to continue to reduce commercial, industrial and petroleum rates relative to residential rates. Currently, industrial rate payers pay 2.54 times the residential rate with the same property valuation.
The figures above are from “Revenue and Rating Plan Fact Sheet”. The Fact Sheet is designed to be read in conjunction with the City of Greater Geelong Survey – Revenue and Rating Planning (alchemer.com)
In 2021-22 Council proposes as part of the 2021-22 to 2024-25 Budget to:
- Increase general rates by a total of 1.5% – in line with the State Government rate cap.
- Hold the average commercial rates payable for 2021-22 at the same level as 2020-21.
- Increase residential rates by an average of 1.7% to offset the hold on the average commercial rate increase.
- Reduce the gap between the commercial and industrial rate from 9.3% in 2020-21 to 6.4% in 2021-22 in line with previous Council rating strategies.
- Align the petroleum differential rate to the industrial rate in the dollar.
- Set the farm rebate at 18.6% to maintain an average rate increase consistent with the residential rate increase.
Over a period of time approximately $15-20m of rate revenue will be redistributed from commercial/industrial and largely to residential.
The Council is seeking views particularly as to the speed of this change.