Permit fee hike

By Lachlan Ellis

A huge jump in Council fees has shocked a Ballan business owner, after being charged over $2,000 per annum for an outdoor dining permit.

Ros Gatt owns Zest Café on Inglis Street with her husband Paul, and said she was blown away by the increase in charges just to have furniture out the front of the café.

“Each year we pay a fee for an outdoor dining permit. The fee that I paid was $232, and that entitles you to three square metres of space on the footpath, which the Council owns. I copied my form from last year, the fees had been waived from last year too and maybe 2020. The fees were less than $500 previously, so I just ticked what I thought was applicable and paid the $232 out to Council,” Ms Gatt told the Moorabool News.

“About a week later the cashier called me and told me that I owed Council another $2095.92. I said to him, there must be some mistake, how can it be that much? He told me about an $82 per square metre condition, which was on the form when I checked. That with what I’ve already paid comes to $2,327.92. And then my rates are on top of that, and are close to another $2,500.”

Ms Gatt said she wasn’t opposed to paying for a permit, but the jump in price she’d experienced wasn’t fair, and had forced her to change the layout of the café.

“A Council representative said the reason for this is because people put a little bit of stuff on the Council strip, and it grew and grew, and they’ve had incidents where people fall over. But to put up the price…if you’re not going to police it and fine people, and tell them to remove the extra stuff, it’s not going to do anything,” she said.

Ms Gatt said it has to be policed better.

“It’s one in all in for every trader that uses the space. A full audit should be done. I’m happy to pay a fee, but I don’t think $82 a square metre is fair and reasonable at that sort of money.”

Michael Ryan is President of the Ballan & District Chamber of Commerce, and said he was surprised to hear about such a significant jump in fees, especially coming out of the pandemic.

“It does seem like an extraordinary amount of money to use a footpath on a part-time basis. The seating isn’t there all the time, at night-time the footpaths are freed up. My question would be, is the formula being applied in the same manner across all businesses in the Shire that use footpaths for seating or display purposes?” Mr Ryan said.

“Maybe there needs to be a conversation about the equity of that. Council has to raise revenue to run the Shire, but coming out of a pandemic and the economic losses that have come with it, I just wonder whether this is the most efficient way of doing that.”

At the 7 September Ordinary Meeting of Council, Cr Paul Tatchell foreshadowed a motion in Urgent Business to return the permit fees to a flat rate for all businesses, with the motion to be heard at a future Council meeting.