Council heads come together

BY ALAN MARINI

THE Municipal Association of Victoria (MVA) held their meeting in Ballarat at the Town Hall last week.

Councilors, Mayors and Chief Executive Officers from the eight local government areas from the central west met on Monday to deliberate on a broad range of local government issues at play in the region.

Representatives from the Surf Coast, Greater Geelong, Golden Plains, Moorabool, Hepburn, Ararat Rural City, City of Ballarat and Pyrenees Shire areas discussed a range of local and state-wide issues in the lead-up to the state election in November.

The MAV’s calls have had success on issues like rural roads – with both major parties committing to providing new funding to local governments for work on local roads.

Local councils manage 76 per cent of the nation’s road network and regional and rural municipalities say they do not have the financial capacity to spend the required amounts each year on capital renewal and improvement.

David Clark, Deputy-president, Rural, MAV, also spoke about where money from the state landfill levy was being directed.

“The levy which is collected on behalf of the State Government by local government on every household bin, is clearly not being returned to councils or communities to support waste programs, instead it is being held onto by the State and also utilized by state agencies to support a range of their regulatory and community functions,” he said.

“Issues around rating have particularly arisen this year with significant uplift in farming land values creating rate rises of between 10 – 25% for a number of rural businesses across the region.

“This underlines the challenge the rating system presents as an asset-based tax that is not linked to capacity to pay or able to manage uplifts in value that push rates beyond the current cap applied by the State of 2.25% in annual increases for Councils”.

Wind farm development was another key point of conversation in terms of issues around potential nuisance impacts from development, as well as the interplay between rural and lifestyle farming areas in wind farm locations.

Recycling was also discussed as councils have all now implemented price rises for waste collection as a result of the closure of China as a destination for around 13% of Australia’s recyclable product.

There remains a clear recognition of the need to improve the quality of the recycling stream across the region. Both the City of Ballarat and Greater Geelong delegates reported on recent international investigations they have undertaken in the waste to energy space.

“Inertia and challenges in decision making featured as a key impetus behind plans from the State to rationalize th multiplicity of authorities with decision making over the Great Ocean Road. Further reform here was welcomed by the group as a whole,” Mr. Clark said.

“The group will come together next at the MAV’s State Council in October to discuss issues on a statewide basis between all 79 Victorian Councils.”