50pc supplementary charges hike for Mutare:
MUTARE residents should brace for a possible 50 percent hike in supplementary charges as the city fathers are set to effect a new valuation roll in January 2019. Speaking at a budget consultative meeting with business in Mutare on Monday, council acting finance director, Mrs Tsitsi Useya said the new supplementary charges would affect residential areas where new zoning guidelines had been used.
This, she said, would result in the highest supplementary charges to be paid by residents going up to $9 from the current $6, which has been applying since 2000. She said other charges like water, sewer and refuse would however remain constant.
“All along, we were operating without a valuation roll therefore we were charging arbitrary figures. Now the draft valuation roll has been completed and we have the zones, which were allocated to the various properties. You will find that some properties are now changing from one zone to the next upper zone. That will automatically increase the rates for that property.”
Mrs Useya said the valuation roll was done every 10 years but the last in Mutare was done in 2000, hence was not reflective of the current property values.
She said it was not council’s wish to increase rates for residents but the move was necessitated by the increase in the number of zones from two to nine.
“You will find that the zones we had were sort of clumped together but are now being spaced out such that if we start charging the old amounts, other zones would be charged nothing. Consequently, we had no option but to just put an increase on supplementary charges so that we accommodate all the new zones, which are now there but were not in the previous charging system. The increase will now depend on whether the rate payers were already paying amounts close to what they are supposed to be paying now,” she said.
For industrial areas, Mrs Useya said council would charge for land as well as the improvements made on the land to come up with the new charges.
She said council would come up with an average multiplier to ensure that businesses were not charged excessive amounts.
“For industrial, commercial and institutional properties, we are not using zoning. We use multipliers of the rating units. The two added together will give the new rates,” she said. Council has been holding consultative meetings on the 2019 budget to promote participatory budgeting, as well as accountability on the part of the city fathers.