State Administrative Tribunal quash Capel rates over breach of Local Government Act

The State Administrative Tribunal have quashed the Shire of Capel’s rates, allowing the shire’s council to reset their rating table before the year’s end. The case, brought to the tribunal by the shire itself, was told to senior member Stephen Willey on Wednesday after an administrative error led the rates to be passed by the council in July, despite being two decimal places off. Dr Willey’s decision for the rates to be quashed was made under section 6.82 of the Local Government Act 1995 (WA), which allows the tribunal to quash a rate or service charge which it deems has been improperly made or imposed. The decision now allows the shire to return to the matter and re-pass its rates at its final council meeting of the year on Wednesday. The rate in the dollar passed by the council during its July meeting read as 0.0825 cents in the dollar for residential properties, rather than the rate in the dollar. This meant rates would only be one per cent of what was intended and fall foul of the Local Government Act, which stipulates rate revenue be not less than 90 per cent of the budget deficiency. Capel shire president Doug Kitchen said the SAT decision allowed the shire to continue as planned with the re-adoption. “It’s the decision we were expecting based on advice we’ve received and in the way that we want to proceed to correct this matter,” he said. “As we’ve put out publicly to the community back in October, this is the way we’re proceeding and we will do with that, the second part (re-adoption of rates), at the November meeting.” Despite receiving the all-clear by the Department of Local Government, Sport, and Cultural Industries before voting on the table, independent legal advice by McLeods Solicitors after the fact led the shire to the SAT. Cr Kitchen said the change to the rating table would be a small one and not impact rate collection or the budget. “It’ll pretty much be a re-adoption of the table, but it will have just that one correction to that subheading, it’s literally just a change of one word,” he said. “Then council will consider that item but as we’ve said there’s no affect to the community, there’s no change in the rates notices, there’s no change in terms of revenue or budget, those sorts of things.” During the shire’s October council meeting discussing the application to the SAT, deputy shire president Sebastian Schiano said the shire had to take responsibility for the error. “The comment has been made about embarrassment (tonight),” he said. “In this situation embarrassment is unavoidable and the only option council has is to take responsibility and refer the decision to SAT, it’s what council’s been asked to do, and what council should do.”