What has occurred so far?Part of the preparation of the 2018 Rating Strategy was to seek comment from a number of community representative groups from throughout the shire. The aim of this was to identify key themes and issues that were important to the community that could then be taken into consideration in preparation of a draft rating strategy.
Invitations were therefore sent to the following selected groups/organisations inviting them to prepare a submission and present their views to a Briefing Session of Council. It was felt these groups represented the main sectors within the shire (i.e. business, farming and residents). The organisations/groups invited were:-
Group organisation |
Representing interests of: |
Associated Kiln Driers (AKD) |
Industry/significant employer |
Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce & Tourism (ABCC) |
Business sector covering Apollo Bay area |
Victorian farmers Federation (VFF) |
Farming Sector (particularly dairy industry) |
Colac Business Inc. (CB Inc.) |
Business sector covering Colac area |
Colac Otway Ratepayers & Residents Association (CORRA) |
Ratepayers and residents shire wide |
Otway Forum (OF) |
Ratepayers and residents in Otway area |
In addition, 31 other community groups/organisations were invited (by emails sent on 24th August 2017) to submit written submissions.
Five of the six selected organisations/groups elected to participate and make submissions to Council.
One community group from the 31 other groups submitted a written submission.
The presentations were scheduled to be delivered at Briefing Sessions of Council on 4th and 18th October 2017. Due to a scheduling delay on 4th October ABCC & OF were rescheduled to the 11th October 2017 and due to an overrun of Council briefing on 18th October, when CORRA , Colac Business Inc. and the VFF were scheduled to appear, representatives of CORRA and Colac Business Inc. elected not to give their presentation and VFF gave an abbreviated presentation.
Colac Business Inc. and CORRA both subsequently emailed details of their submissions to officers rather than be re-scheduled to appear.