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SPOTLIGHT ON DANCE: Donna Peach addresses the audience during the Inaugural Annual Dance Affair at Horsham Town Hall on Saturday night. The colourful, interactive community event was the major project for this year’s Art is... a Footprint festival, which runs until Sunday. For more photos, see page 12. Picture: PAUL CARRACHER
Intervention plea M
BY SARAH SCULLY
embers of an Ararat Rural City Rating Strategy Advisory Group have called on Local Government Minister Marlene Kairouz to intervene amid concerns about council staff ‘biases, conflicts and cherry-picking’ in a draft rating strategy process.
In a letter to Ms Kairouz the group stated it was disappointed to seek further ministerial intervention ‘to avoid a repeat of the unfortunate ARCC situation and community divide that ratepayers were forced to deal with last year’. The advisory group formed following a recommendation from a Com-
mission of Inquiry into Ararat Rural City Council, which the State Government appointed to consider the efficiency and effectiveness of the council’s rating strategy. The government’s intervention followed a request from then mayor Paul Hooper and the Victorian Farmers Federation after the council’s draft budget proposed to end all differential rates in the rural city. Group spokesman Sam King said the RSAG was tasked with helping the council to introduce a rating strategy that met the objectives of the community. “We had a series of meetings, which included council staff, an economist,
an independent chair and the group of RSAG, which had 14 people on it, to devise a rating strategy,” he said. “We were educated on all the pros and cons and what has to happen within the sectors going forward. “We had two resignations from the group for personal reasons, so we were left with 12. “We had some really good debate over the five months. It took a long time to get to where we were going, but we did.” The group came up with four models, which were presented to a Citizen’s Jury, the next step in the community engagement process. “When we got to the point where we
were allowed to deliver our findings to the jury, we were given 25 minutes to explain five months of work and deliver our findings to a group of jury members who were totally uneducated on the issue,” Mr King said. “We found this to be very short considering the amount of time and effort we’d put into it. “Once we got through the process the jury came up with a rating strategy that they believed, and we believed, was very sound. “It was transparent, it had the future in mind – and not a whole lot of that has been adopted by council in their draft rating strategy.” Mr King said State Government-
appointed municipal monitor Janet Dore ‘repeatedly assured us during the five-month RSAG process, that if consensus was reached between the RSAG and Citizens Jury as to a preferred model, then the ARCC would be viewed unfavourably if they did not adopt this recommendation – insinuating ministerial involvement should this occur’. He said the RSAG and the jury reached consensus on a preferred model, which represented a holistic draft rating strategy that served to equitably distribute the rating burden and provide rating stability going forward. Continued page 7
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