Rates Exchange 14 September 2023 

Agenda items discussed during the meeting. 

• Cassowary Coast are in the process of acquiring land and interested to hear from any other Council that has gone down the Acquire Land path, excluding laneways, road resumptions etc. Mareeba have proceeded with acquiring land for valueless land.  

• Cassowary Coast shared their process and asked what do other Councils do with properties that are not being utilised and the property owner want Council to remove their sewerage charges. Eg: Set of units that are being renovated (however will take a significant amount of time). Western Downs and Gold Coast shared their processes. 

• Mareeba are having people who aren’t owners of the property paying the rates on that property, do other councils have these scenarios?  And do they have concerns about this occurring, especially if they aren’t relatives of the deceased?  The main example is deceased estates, where the owner/s have been deceased for some time.  One example is 100 years, the other about 20 years. Cassowary Coast have similar and proceeded down sale of land path. Isaac have similar with ‘hand shake deals’. 

• Mareeba asked have any Councils experienced where a property is classed as vacant has overdue rates and is due for sale of land but neighbours buildings are built over the boundary line?  From what we can tell neighbours have been using the block for years. “Vacant” block is deceased estate. General response to proceed via sale of land.

• Gladstone asked for Councils who utilise smart metering/smart technology, what percentage of your smart meters are manually verified each cycle, year etc.?  Auditing of the reads in comparison to the data received electronically. Gympie only manually check under-reads and missed reads and don’t perform spot checks. Cairns read smart meters manually once following installation to check it matches the electronic read. But nothing after that unless it shows some skewed data then we would arrange a manual read. 

• Western Downs asked when do other Council's with renewable energy rating categories ie solar, wind & battery commence the relevant charge and/or requesting State Valuations to value accordingly. Gympie change the rating category as soon as the property is purchased.  Don't wait for DoR to recognize the solar farm with general rate categories noting this category as 'as identified by the CEO'. Bundaberg use the MCU approval date and place into renewable energy category, would take out if MCU cancelled. 

• Issuing Rates Notices with owner suppressions was discussed within the group with, Western Downs, Gladstone, Tablelands, Ipswich, Gympie, Gold Coast, sharing their processes. 

General Discussion 

• Land valuation act amendment bill out for feedback 

https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/html/bill.first/bill-2023-029 

Workshops/training/conferences  

• Share with your colleagues about our upcoming free online What is a Village Exchange? Introductory Information Session on 14th Nov, this is for those that haven’t joined an exchange before and might be curious as to what they’re all about. See our website for more details.