[Matthew Saunders]

Penrith City Council is allowing these customers to re-apply over the telephone. From our point of view we have a form signed by the customer that says “unless I revoke my consent, this applicant Consent record is a permanent consent, and may be relied on by the Council until such time as I revoke it” and we are taking that as being current even after we removed their rebate (they haven’t revoked their consent).

We still have a signed consent form to show Centrelink, so we don’t feel there are any other barriers stopping us.

Matthew.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Peter,

Penrith City Council has many turf farms and we categorise them as Farmland on the basis that it is a horticultural activity.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Suzi,

Penrith City Council isn’t sending anything with the classification notice, but nothing has been decided with the July notice as yet.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi everyone,

My manager wants to know how other councils are expending the up-front costs provided for the property classifications. Has anyone appointed any new or temporary staff, or set up a project team, implemented any software updates or carried out any major property reviews or inspections that will be paid out of the funding? Are you planning on spending all the funding?

Penrith City Council has so far only allocated a small portion for staffing costs (overtime) for reviewing the classifications.

Thanks.
Matthew.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Mary,

Penrith City Council received an application from Mission Australia in June 2016 for all of their properties. We approved an exemption for about half of the properties which were identified as being purchased or acquired by them outside the vesting process, but we found a few Gazette notices which showed that some of their land was vested to them by NSW Housing, so for those ones we did not approve the exemption. They have since paid the rates for the ones we didn’t approve so they appear to have accepted our decision.

For one of the Gazettes No 62 dated 11 July 2014 I can see a property that is in Port Macquarie (79 Hollingsworth Street) so you may want to look up that Gazette if that is one of the properties.

Kind regards,

Matthew.

[Matthew Saunders]

I am not sure that this clarifies the ESPL for CHP’s who we have as exempt from rates. To be residential, the only way a property can be classified as Residential for the ESPL according to the manual is if it is classified as Residential for rating purposes under the Act. If it is exempt from rates, it is not classified as Residential (or any other rating category) for rating purposes, so can’t be classified as Residential for ESPL purposes. If they do not meet the Residential ESPL classifications as public benefit, then they must therefore fall to the default category which is Commercial. Does anyone have this interpretation?

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Maria,

A farmland application form is not a prescribed form so it can be up to your council to decide what to include or don’t include on the form. The owner or their agent can apply so the owners’ signature is not required.

Even if a signature was required, the ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS ACT 2000 allows for methods to be adopted in lieu of a signature by identifying the customer by other means with some other requiremenst. (Sec9).

I hope this helps.

Matthew.

[Matthew Saunders]

Penrith City Council had an SV approval which commenced in July 2011. We have also just had another SRV approved to commence from 1 July 2016.

From our experience in July 2012 there was not very much conjecture from our ratepayers when the SV was implemented and they received their first rates notice. Whether this was through either acceptance of the SV or apathy to increasing costs everywhere we can not be 100% sure. We did send a letter in July 2012 to the ratepayers from the General Manager with the rates notice which may have assisted also.

Generally it is the ratepayers that complain every year about increase who call so those ratepayers will never be satisfied anyway.

I was on the SRV hotline for our customers during our recent consultation period and there were only a handful of calls (mostly complaints but even some supporting)about the SV. Most of the calls that were received to the SV hotline were calling about other Council services and not even calling to complain about the SV.

We weren’t sure about the response we would get. We didn’t put extra staff on but we did have details of average increases, suburb increases and calculating spreadsheets ready to take the calls if necessary.

I hope this helps.

[Matthew Saunders]

Hi Ann,

I think that although Chapter 17, Part 2 Division 5 deals with the sale of land for unpaid rates, the section that 603(d) refers to is only Section 726 within the same division that relates to all properties transferred under the real property act, not just properties sold for unpaid rates. It appears that Section 726 has illogically been placed in the division that deals with the sale of land for unpaid rates. With this in mind, a Section 603 Certificate is to show the owner(s) name(s) if the names have been provided as a result of a transfer registered under the Real Property Act(which is almost always the case). This is how Penrith City Council has interpreted this section and therefore we show the names of the owners on all Section 603 Certificates issued.

[Matthew Saunders]

Penrith City Council charges a dishonoured payment fee. It is presently $30 and is listed in our fees and charges. It is charged for dishonoured cheque payments and dishonoured direct debit payments and is for cost recovery more than a deterrant. We charge to the rates account also.

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