Cr Leigh Dunscombe

Murrindindi Council officers are progressing with the preparatory work for developing the annual budget for 2018-19,” Cr Leigh Dunscombe told last week’s meeting of Murrindindi Shire Council.

“Council briefing sessions are scheduled to work on this over the next three months.

“The Exposure Bill for the new Local Government Act has been released for public comment. The current Act was established in 1989 and is considered to be too prescriptive and not up to date with contemporary practices.

“The aim of the State Government is to reduce the level of regulation in the Act, by making it more principle-based and leaving it to individual Council’s to determine how they will meet the new principles.

“Council officers are reviewing the detail of what is being proposed and Council will consider making a submission to the consultation process in February.

“The process of conducting property revaluations is being changed by the State Government. As of 2019, properties will be required to be re-valued on an annual basis instead of every two years.

“The Victorian Valuer General will be taking over the responsibility from councils for conducting the annual valuation process. The benefit to councils of this change is that the State Government will now cover the full cost of the revaluation process, whereas currently councils commit 50 per cent of this cost.

“Council officers are progressing well with the upgrade to Council’s main IT platforms and work is on track to go live in mid March.

“Amongst other things this will enable improvements to Council’s ability to track and manage the requests it receives from ratepayers and the general public and improve our overall responsiveness,” Cr Dunscombe said.