Published on Monday, 9 July 2018 at 12:15:00 PM

Northern Grampians Shire Council, located in Stawell, Victoria, like many rural councils have had to balance the needs of its local community with ensuring the fair and equitable distribution of the rate burden over its entire rate base. Relying on the rate modelling solution provided by Harbour Software, EasyRev, Council recently had to address some significant impacts arising from a revaluation combined with the rate pegging requirements in place in Victoria.

As recently reported in the Wimmera Mail Times ‘the council, confronted with a scenario where some farm rates in the shire were due to rise by between 35 and 40 percent, decided to make a 2.25 percent rate increase across residential, farming and recreation sectors. The move changed a farm-rate differential from 65 to 52 percent.’

Michael Bailey, Council’s CEO stated “using computer software modelling (EasyRev), the total income the council receives through rate collection will not be diminished by the changes we’ve made…. We’re very comfortable with the information we can provide to the council, knowing that the decisions made are based on accurate and detailed information. With the system we have, we can show the deeper impacts of decisions better than many other councils”.

“The Council won a Local Government Professionals award in February, beating many metro councils, because of our software transformation based around innovation management involving our IT systems”.

Harbour Software is extremely pleased to be associated with Northern Grampians Shire and in working collaboratively with them to assist achieve their drive for continuous improvement by developing innovative and agile software solutions that provides significant and tangible benefits to their community.

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