By XAVIER SMERDON
THE company that valued Tarneit and Truganina resident’s properties, resulting in rate rises for residents of up to 720 per cent, has revealed that it based its increased valuations on just four sales of properties in the area.
The Operations Manager from Opteon, a company that values properties for several Melbourne council’s to allow them to determine how much to raise rates by, Steve Davey, was a speaker at a public meeting held in Werribee last night.
Around 500 angry residents turned up to the public meeting held by Wyndham Council to have their questions answered.
During the almost three hour meeting the residents heard from fellow ratepayers doing it tough, Wyndham Council directors and the Mayor and CEO of Wyndham.
Mr Davey was unable to give a presentation as the frustrated residents demanded that the man that personally valued their properties take to the podium himself.
“We are not in bed with the council, we are not in bed with the developers or anything like that. We have to deal specifically with what’s happening in the market place,” Mr Davey said.
“When we perform evaluations for council we do not inspect every property within the municipality.
“If we were to go out and have a look at your parcel of land for instance and it was determined similar to what was mentioned before about undevelopable portions of that land, that the valuation needed to be adjusted downwards based on that data, that reduction will take place.”
Mr Davey said during the valuation period from January 2010 to January this year while some properties were on the market, only four sales were recorded in the direct area.
“We’re thankful that we disregarded a lot of those asking prices because they were horrendous and if we’d valued on those there would have been some substantially higher valuations,” he said.
“There was more than two sales. There was actually four recorded sales in the direct area (over two years).”
Wyndham CEO Kerry Thompson said the council was determined to review its rating strategy and hardship strategy.
The residents were also informed that if they were disputing their new rates notices they would only have to pay their previous rate notice until their property was reviewed.
Wyndham Council’s Director of Corporate Services, who was repeatedly heckled throughout the night, said the council would also look at not charging interest on rates notices if residents disputed them.
Former Wyndham councillor and two-time Mayor Henry Barlow was at the meeting and described the situation as a “debacle”.
“I thought that the council didn’t handle it very well,” Mr Barlow told Star.
“The whole issue slipped under their guard and that amazes me.
“In my view a much better way to handle it would be to have no rate change until such time that a developer plan is put to council.
“There has to be a trigger and the trigger can’t just be that the Urban Growth Boundary has changed.”
Neil Anderson, part of the Fair Rate committee that has since been established, told Star the councillors should be sacked and replaced by administrators.
“At least they (administrators) are more accountable and we wouldn’t just get waffle from them,” Mr Anderson said.
“I’d like the councillors to stop the rhetoric and give us answers.”
