Farmer hits brick wall about rates complaint

As if a huge increase in his council rates bill wasn’t enough for Torwood farmer Corey Farr’s blood to boil.

Adding salt to his wounds is the fact that he’s hit a brick wall when he has tried to talk to an appropriate Baw Baw shire officer over the past six months about his complaints.

Mr Farr said he has visited the shire office three times and was told “someone would look into it”.

He also has made five unsuccessful telephone calls – the times and dates all logged by him – to a council valuer and left messages asking for a return call but has heard nothing. Mr Farr’s bill from the council for this financial year for rates and garbage collection charges at his 110-acre property have soared to $10,000.

He acknowledges a new house he has built would increase the property value but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The farm on which he grazes animals is on two separate titles.

Mr Farr said the smaller lot – 46 acres – on which there are no building improvements has now been assessed separately and as vacant land that has seen the rates on it jump to about $6000 when he believes the figure should be around $1600.

Also grating with him is that he was separately told by the shire that he cannot rent out his former house he lived in until moving into the new home.

“I’ve been rated wrongly,” Mr Farr said.

All I want is fair treatment, he added.

At the moment he continues to wait, a little impatiently, for a call from the council office.

Mr Farr is another in a list of disgruntled ratepayers that have contacted The Gazette about reclassifications of their properties and supplementary valuations that have resulted in large rate rises.