By NOEL MURPHY
A CORIO pipes company has sacked four workers, blaming a $200,000 special City Hall tax for new road and drain works it says provides no benefits.
Bates Pipes and Products said the “sole purpose” of the special charge – part of the Geelong Ring Road Employment Precinct – was to enable the City to develop and sell its own land.
Ben and Robert Bates said the charge was “in the name of creating jobs for Geelong and reducing the council’s debt”.
“After two years not one job has been created, and over $8 million of ratepayers money has been wasted on the City of Greater Geelong’s land development ambitions,” they told the Independent.
Twelve months ago, Bates, together with three other manufacturing companies, accused the City of blackmail and reneging on a deal to cut the charge if they didn’t object.
Robert Bates said the City was applying for a State grant and if they did not object they would receive a large part of that grant as a reduction of their costs.
Yesterday, the Bates said $650,000-plus in special rates levied against the companies would be “better spent” by the manufacturers creating jobs than on the “land development ambitions” that had not created a single job in the past two years.
“The City of Greater Geelong and the State Government seem very concerned about losing manufacturing jobs in Geelong but don’t seem too concerned about the impact that imposing such an insidious special rates charge has on small local manufacturers battling the current economic environment,” the Bates said.
City of Greater Geelong CEO Stephen Griffin said participants in the special charge scheme had been offered an interest-free period for payment, as well as receiving significant benefit from a State government grant.
“This is a very important project which will be of great benefit to landowners in the area,” he said.
Mr Griffin said council had honoured all commitments made to landowners during the course of the scheme’s implementation. He said the scheme included significant works at no cost to landowners.
“These works include a detention basin and construction of the Bacchus Marsh Road and O’Briens Road intersection and footpath crossings,” Mr Griffin said.
“The management of the special charge scheme has led to much lower project costs than the original estimate, and this has resulted in a significant benefit to landowners.”
Mr Griffin said Regional Development Victoria was satisfied with the management of the project and the use of the State Government grant.
