By NOEL MURPHY
GEELONG and Surf Coast councils have come under attack from Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) over rate charges against owners of vacant land.
The UDIA slammed Geelong’s charge of 1.4 times the residential rate and Surf Coast’s 39 per cent hike as exploiting a cash cow, simplistic and discouraging building that both municipalities claim to be trying to encourage.
UDIA executive director Tony de Domenico described the vacant block rate hikes as “crazy stuff”.
“It just turns people off,” he told the Independent.
“You can’t force people to build if they can’t afford it.
“If you want people to build, you’ve got to make it easier not harder.
“The haves will get everything and the have-nots will get nothing.”’
City Hall told the Independent vacant properties historically attracted a higher rate.
The 140 per cent differential to residential was up from 133 per cent last year and not far removed from a figure around 137 per cent that had commonly applied.
Mayor Keith Fagg said the higher rate was “really about a balanced approach to broad acreage of land”.
“We want to encourage farming land, so we have a 32.5 per cent cut to farming rates, but we want to discourage untimely divisions of land where it’s essentially been land-banked and farming activity stops and there’s no activity,” he told the Independent.
The Surf Coast Shire dived for cover over its plans, which could double-slug vacant land owners with a 40 per cent rate increase and an additional property revaluation in the coming year.
Mayor Libby Coker refused to answer a list questions from the Independent about the impost, which the UDIA described as double-dipping.
“The point with Surf Coast is they’ve sat on releasing land at Torquay … so the value of existing land has gone so much higher that you have to be a millionaire and that why they’re not selling,” Mr de Domenico said.
“They should realise we’ve just come through a global financial crisis – they mightn’t be reading their papers – but, hey, you can’t have it both ways.’’
Cr Coker has told other media outlets the rates hike was aimed at stopping “land-banking” and encouraging building in areas identified for growth.
She refused to talk to the Independent, requesting emailed questions that she then referred to the council’s public relations department.
A statement from the communications department said the shire “encourage(s) ratepayers to take part in the submission process if they have a concern or comment”.
