By Ann Marie Angebrandt
SHOCKING rate bills up to $60,000 higher than last year could force some Wyndham residents off their land.
Rural landowners in Wyndham Vale and Tarneit, and multigeneration families on beachfront land in Werribee South, found the values of their properties increased by as much as 1700 per cent when they received their 2006-07 rates notice from the Wyndham City Council.
Charlie Grima, 65, said he would rather pay his extreme bill than move off the land he has farmed for close to 30 years.
His 87-hectare property on Ballan and Hobbs roads was valued at about $1.6 million last year, generating a rate bill of about $5000.
This year, the land is valued at about $24 million and his rate bill is nearly $65,000.
“What can you do?” Mr Grima asked.
“They (the Council) told me one day someone will buy it and build houses, but I don’t want to be pushed off,” he said.
John Randall, a pensioner who has lived in Beach Rd, Werribee South, for 40 years, said a council official told him to “enjoy the view” when he questioned why the rates for his modest bungalow with a granny flat had increased from about $1500 to $2250.
Mr Randall, who has a disabled wife and son, said he thought it was a shame that working class people who had settled the area were being driven out to “turn it into Toorak”.
Wyndham mayor Shane Bourke said the council would never force any resident off their land.
Affected residents were welcome to work out special payment plans, he said.
Sue Elliot, who has lived on a 12-hectare hobby farm off Ballan Rd for more than 30 years, said she was told to expect increased rates with the State Government’s biennual revaluation of Victorian properties in January 2006.
But she didn’t expect them to be so high.
The value of the property she owns with husband Graham skyrocketed from $729,000 last year to $3.5 million this year.
Their 2006-07 rate bill is nearly $10,000 – about $8000 more than last year.
“It’s cheaper to live in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Prahran or Brighton than out here,” she said.
The Elliots’ property was listed outside Melbourne’s urban growth boundary last year, but it was inside it this year following State Government adjustments.
Along with about 150 other Wyndham property owners, the residents are appealing their rate bills to the council before the 27 October deadline.
Werribee South Ratepayers’ Association president Nik Tsardakis said the council should follow the system used by cities such as Brimbank, which applied a lower rate to rural areas.
“We have no milk bars, no community centres, very few services here,” he said.
“Yet we pay the same rate as urban communities and that’s very unfair.”
Wyndham council trialed a differential farm rate in the late 1990s, charging rural landowners about three-quarters the rates of city dwellers.
But that was replaced in 2001 with a uniform rate, the council offering rural landowners a rebate for controlling weeds and pests on their properties.
Wyndham CEO Ian Robins said the council was legally bound by the assessment of the auditor general, which works within the State Government.
“While some property owners may face a large increase in rates, these owners will also have a substantial financial benefit in the event that they sell their property,” he said.
Mr Robins said of the 50,000 rateable properties in Wyndham, the rates for more than 30,000 properties actually decreased this year.
On average, Wyndham’s rates went up 2.5 per cent, the lowest in Victoria, he said.
