[Simone Fisher]

Hi Lisa,

We had a similar application a few years ago. In our case the property was owned by an Aboriginal Land Council declared under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. They claimed PBI status & requested that their application be considered under sec 556(1)(h). We advised them that their application would only be considered under sec 555(1)(g).

The property in question was used for cultural activities as well as a small commercial café & was also available for public hire for weddings/functions & catering.

We declined the application due to the commercial activities & sited section 43 of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act & Clause 7(2)(b) of the Aboriginal Land Rights Regulation 2002 (now 4(2)(a) of the 2014 reg).

They weren’t happy with the decision & advised that they would be referring the application to their solicitors but we haven’t received anything further & they have been making payment of the business rates ever since.

Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Trevor, we include this notation on ours
‘Pensioner rate rebates will be cancelled proportionate to the number of full financial quarters remaining upon the transfer of ownership of a property.’ & when they phone for an update we provide them with the dollar amount to be written back as we get allot that don’t seem to be too sure about how many quarters there are in a year (not joking :)).
Thanks,
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Kelly, Wollondilly closes 11:30 am today & reopens 2/1/2018.
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi James, I thought the same thing but looks like there will also be a couple of amendments to the LGA. Check page 59. New section 566(6).

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Jeanette, ours is rated business & no community donation.

Thanks
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi MO, we’ve had an ongoing dispute with solicitors regarding rateability of some church land. A church was requesting a refund of all rates paid between 1920 & 2015. 1920 was never going to happen but we were considering going back the past 6 years just to resolve the matter.
In my last reply to them (in March) I again advised that no refund would be issued but this time I referred to Recovery of Imposts Act. Hopefully I’m not jinxing it but we haven’t heard from them since.
Thanks,
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Sam, we sub-classified vacant land when we did our initial classifications (where possible). We have a domestic waste availability charge for vacant residential land so I used this to identify vacant residential land within our town centres. For rural residential assessments with no access to domestic waste we used a combination of Near Maps & DA information. For business land we looked at if a property was coded for a Stormwater Management Charge & if they weren’t we checked mapping.

We did have a number of properties where it was impossible to see from mapping if there were structures built due to tree canopies. The geography of these properties (water catchment, access through National Park, etc.) also made them difficult to inspect so we classified them as non-vacant & will rely on an application from the owner for vacant sub-classification.

I believe section 57(4) means that if an application for sub-classification is received it cannot be backdated beyond 1 July in the rating year that it has been received & not that sub-classification must be applied for annually.

For review of sub-classification (for residential assessments) we have added a procedure to our waste adjustments. When a new waste service is delivered we add a waste charge & remove the availability charge so this will now also trigger an adjustment to the FESL classification from the start of the next quarter.

For business properties we will be reviewing approved DA’s monthly & also do a larger check using mapping annually for any that are missed (fortunately we don’t have many vacant business properties).

Hope this has been of help.
Regards,
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Susan, Wollondilly has 18,000 rateable assessment (but growing). We have 4 rates staff including myself. We don’t do water.
Thanks
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi David, Fred also failed us on our first audit due to application forms completed pre our electronic records system not being located. We have around 2,500 pensioners & I took one staff member away from normal duties for one-two weeks with a list of pensioners to go through trim & mark off any that we had a completed form for. For the rest (around 400) we sent letters requesting that new applications be completed. We received allot of queries (from the ratepayer, their family members, accountants, legal representatives) & most weren’t happy & some phoned more than several times.
I think in the end the one to two weeks spent going through the applications that we did have to reduce the number of letters we needed to send was well worth it.
We also had around 60 that didn’t reply to the first letter. For these we removed the rebate codes & sent a letter & another application form with their July Notice advising that a rebate could not be granted for the new year until they completed the application. We received almost all of these back soon after.
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Nicole, we have previously rated from the date of registration of a new plan. From 1 July we will be rating from start of the next quarter to keep our rate supps consistent with ESPL.
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi David, all done.
Melanie, I added ours into Authority through bulk maintenance. I thought it would be a long & painful process at first but only ended up taking a few hours including ones that I had to go back & manually change.
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Was news to me yesterday aswell MO and if we don’t receive the new vals until March it’s going to make getting them in, balanced and analysed before setting next years rates pretty rushed.

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Linda. I had two examples of this when I was at Auburn. The DA consents had conditions that the units could not use Councils waste service due to space restrictions & they had to engage their own contractor. No waste or availability charge was levied for these units due to the DA consents making Council’s waste service unavailable to the units. One of the unit blocks had several hundred units so was picked up by our auditors one year. They did a review & agreed that we could not levy a charge due to the DA conditions.
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi Emma,
I’d follow section 573 & apportion the remaining balance between the two new assessments. If the balance of the parent lot was shown on the 603 certificate the solicitor should have made payment of this in full at settlement & if they haven’t the owners should be chasing them to sort out who’s paid & owes what & to make a payment to Council. Might be worth sending a letter to both owners before year end advising them if you intend doing this as the owner who thinks they’ve paid their portion might chase their solciitor a little harder to sort it out with the other owners solicitor.
I’m glad all of the hopeless solicitors don’t just live in Picton. 🙂
Simone

[Simone Fisher]

Hi, sorry about the late reply. Advice that I’ve received in the past is that interest can only be applied to sundry debtors once judgement has been obtained & then the court interest rate would apply. The exception to this would be if default interest has been stipulated in the contract or agreement relevant to the debt.
Thanks,
Simone

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