Check your Council rates notice. If you are the 44 per cent part of the community charged a ‘Minimum Rate’, you are subsidising both Council and the owners of more expensive land.
A Minimum Rates Notice means that Council’s Standard Rate calculation would result in less than the Minimum Rate charge, but Council increases your rate bill to the higher Minimum Rate charge, while the more expensive properties only pay the Standard Rate calculation. Check your Land Value, and multiply it by 0.001336 to see how much extra Council increases your bill to the Minimum Rate charge.
While Council is having trouble paying its bills, so are we on cheaper land value properties, an issue that may be less significant for those buying multi-million-dollar land value properties. And while eliminating increasing fees to the Minimum Rate would result in less income, Council should look at increases on those that have a higher capacity to pay. That would be: increasing all Byron CBD owners’ rates, (including the new multi-million dollar CBD apartments), from the present two times the Standard Rate calculation to three times; increasing the out-of-Byron businesses’ rates calculation from the present 1.5 to two times; include every tourist holiday letting property, (which might even encourage more properties returned to residential rentals); and include every rural property that is not used for purely residential or agricultural use, to two times the Standard Rate calculation as well.
Or heavens above, think long term, and use the land around the Byron TAFE, the closed South Byron sewerage land, the ex-Mullum Hospital land, etc. all presently adopted for residential development, for Council-owned residential caravan, cabin, manufactured home, or ‘tiny home’ developments, that will generate income in perpetuity, while additionally providing capacity for those on low incomes to live here.
The elimination of this Minimum Rate subsidy, and consideration of increased rates for commercial properties, and long-term income generation, should be the basis of a thorough rates review, not the present simplistic Council ‘pay more or get less’ options.
I note that a few months ago, Mayor Ndiaye stated that the organisers of a democracy conference in Greece were prepared to pay for her airfares, accommodation, and conference fees to attend. I don’t know if she attended, but Greece is the birthplace of democracy and they do have a reputation to uphold.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
