June 27 date for Ararat decision
Ararat municipal leaders have until June 27 to decide whether they will adopt a controversial 201718 rating structure.
Ararat Rural City Council has already voted for a draft system that eliminates a farm differential and municipal charge and after assessing submissions will decide at a meeting whether to adopt the proposal.
The council will also consider a 201718 draft budget and 2017-21 council plan at the meeting.
A procession of district farmers, farm business leaders and representatives used a special council meeting in Ararat last week to condemn the proposed new rating plan.
People travelled from across the Ararat municipality and beyond to pack Alexandra Oval Community Centre to air their views and hear others speak on the issue.
Speaker after speaker, most of them farmers, urged Ararat Rural City Council to reconsider the draft proposal to apply uniform rates across the municipality.
Only one of 44 speakers at the meeting spoke against change.
The council is considering about 700 community submissions on the move.
Last week’s special meeting provided people with an opportunity to speak to their submissions and direct comments to the Ararat council.
About 100 people had originally nominated to speak their submissions at the meeting but many withdrew after early speakers covered issues they were keen to raise.
Speakers consistently used words such as fairness and equity, governance, transparency, morals, ethics, consultation, fear, health and social welfare, the economy, the future and costs to paint a picture of how they felt about the decision and what the change might mean.
There were also comments that the rating system, introduced as an economic revenue-balancing tool during council amalgamations in 1994, was either flawed or open to or being used inappropriately.
Farmers in the Ararat municipality pay a farm differential base of 55 percent of the general rate. Under the new plan they would pay 100 percent. the need for the rating