What's a Council Plan?

• What is a Council Plan?

• A Council Plan sets out our long-term vision for the City and the outcomes we want to achieve during the term of the Plan. The Local Government Act 2020 requires all Victorian councils to prepare and adopt a Council Plan of at least four years, that includes:

  • Council's strategic direction
  • Service, infrastructure and amenity priorities we want to deliver
  • Measures to track our performance.

  A Council Plan must be underpinned by community engagement and driven by a community vision.

• Why do we need to update the Council Plan and Budget?

• The Local Government Act 2020 requires all Victorian councils to update their Council Plan each year.

  On 23 June 2021, Council adopted the Council Plan 2021-31 and Budget 2021/22.

  On 29 June 2022, Council adopted the updated Council Plan 2021-31 (Year 2) and Budget 2022/23.

  Between November 2022 to June 2023, Council will work to produce the updated Council Plan 2021-31 (Year 3) and Budget 2023/24 for the 2023/24 financial year.

Providing Feedback

• What will happen to the feedback I provide?

• You will receive an acknowledgement from Council when you submit your feedback, if you choose to provide an email address.

  Your feedback will help to inform Council’s decision making.

  Council will contact you with its response to your feedback following the adoption of the Council Plan and Budget 2023/24. It is anticipated that these responses will be distributed in the first week of July 2023. Responses will also be made available on the Have Your Say page at this time.

• What if I prefer to communicate my feedback in person?

• There are several ways you can provide feedback on the Council Plan and Budget. Along with completing the feedback form on this page, you can also attend a pop-up session during April and May to provide feedback in-person. These pop-up sessions are listed on the Have Your Say page.

  You can let Council know when you submit your feedback if you want to speak to your feedback at a Council Meeting. Alternatively, you can email the ‘Council Planning and Performance Helpdesk’ (Helpdesk-coppmeansbusiness@portphillip.vic.gov.au) by 22 May 2023. The date for Hearing Feedback at Council Meeting will be 7 June 2023.

• Do I have to provide my name and email address?

• Yes, you will have to provide your name and email address in order to submit your feedback. We're asking you to register to the Have Your Say website to provide feedback. This is to ensure the people who have participated in this survey only provide one response.

• Why do I have to provide demographic information when I submit my feedback?

• Every time we ask the community for feedback, we want to find out who we've heard from, and who might be missing from the conversation.

  The questions we ask you on the feedback form (such as gender, age, etc) will be used to build a picture of who we have heard from in our community.

• I want to upload a document to the feedback form, is this possible?

• Yes, you can upload up to a maximum of 5 attachments in the feedback form, if there's an initiative or service you want to tell us about.

  You can do this by selecting the option "Other initiatives or services you think are missing" at the start of the form.

  Allowed file types are: pdf, doc, docx, txt, xls, xlsx, rtf, png, gif, jpg, jpeg

  Size limit is: 10.00 MB

• I don't want to answer the questions, I just want to provide my feedback, how do I do this?

• While we strongly encourage you to answer as many questions as possible on the feedback form, you can go straight to the final question and type in your feedback to the Council Plan and Budget. Particularly if you have feedback about the Council Plan and Budget that doesn't relate to any of the questions. To do this, don't select any of the topic options in Question 1.

  However, if it's about any of the topics listed, we encourage you to write it in response to these questions.

Rates

• Why has Council proposed a rates increase?

• Cost of living pressures across our City, from rising inflation to interest rates, have been front of mind this year. This is why we are proposing a rates increase of 2.8 per cent – lower than the Victorian Government’s 3.5 per cent rates cap and well under the expected 4.5 per cent inflation rate.

  While various options were considered, we believe a lower rate rise provides the best current, and ongoing financial relief, to our community. This is because whatever rate rise may follow in the future, it will be based off the lower 2.8 per cent figure.

  The impact to our 23/24 draft Budget of adopting a lower rate rise is about $900,000. The accumulated impact over 10 years is $11 million less in rates collected.

  This is the first time we have proposed an increase below the rates cap, introduced in 2016/17. It will not be funded by service cuts. Instead, we will put less into our reserve fund as a buffer for known and unexpected challenges over the next decade.

  Unexpected extra income from revenue streams, including parking and investments, helped put us in a position to provide a balanced and responsible Budget.

Cultural Development Fund (Projects)

• What is the Cultural Development Fund (Projects)?

• The Cultural Development Fund (CDF) grants program has been developed by Council to support artists, arts and cultural organisations and creative community projects in the City of Port Phillip.

  Projects should contribute to the Council Plan strategic directions to guide our program priorities for the future.

  Proposed reduction of funding to the CDF program will directly impact funding opportunities for six to ten individual artists annually. Up to approximately 20,000 community members may be indirectly impacted annually, based on attendance at those funded events in previous years.

  You can read more about the CDF here.

• How did the proposed reduction of funding come about?

• A Cost Review was carried out between July 2022 and February 2023, to identify:

  • Any possible cost reductions Council could make
  • The impacts these cost reductions might have
  • Any compliance, regulatory or contractual requirements of these cost reductions
  • Any engagement with the community that would be needed if cost reductions were made
  • How Council could provide the community with more transparency about costs.

  A list of proposed changes was developed out of this Cost Review and Council endorsed the proposal to reduce the Cultural Development Fund (Projects) from $187,000 to $100,000.

Waste and FOGO

• Why has Council decided to introduce Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) collection and a FOGO Charge?

• Food and garden waste makes up around 46 per cent of the waste our households send to landfill, and produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is approximately 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

  Recycling our FOGO materials is an important step in helping our environment. FOGO materials collected through our new recycling service are turned into nutrient rich soil conditioner which is used to rehabilitate land throughout Victoria.

  Currently, single-unit dwellings have access to FOGO kerbside collection, and from mid-2023, this service will begin to be rolled out to multi-unit dwellings and communal hubs.

  You can find out more about our FOGO collection here

• Why is the Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) Charge for single-unit dwellings and multi-unit dwellings different?

• To reflect the different levels of service and cost between single-unit and multi-unit dwellings, we propose to fund this service for multi-unit dwellings from the default waste charge. This means we would not introduce a separate charge for FOGO collection for multi-unit dwellings. For single-unit dwellings, who receive kerbside FOGO collection, we propose to keep the FOGO collection charge, but reduce it to $66.00.

• Can I opt out of my FOGO bin and not pay the FOGO Charge?

• A Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) kerbside collection service is currently provided to all eligible single-unit dwellings. It is possible for owners of single-unit dwellings to apply to opt-out of this service, however there are only two criteria in which an application can be considered:

  • If there is no space at the front or rear of your property to store an additional bin.
  • If you have alternative methods of repurposing all food and garden organics at your property. Only compost systems that are able to accept food items including meat, dairy, citrus, expired products and garden organics will be considered to opt out.

  We strongly encourage everyone to use the FOGO service, to help work towards minimising the amount of waste sent to landfill, minimising our methane output and helping our environment.

• Why is garbage collection changing from weekly to fortnightly, and when is this happening?

• Kerbside garbage collection is shifting from a weekly collection to a fortnightly collection in January/February 2024 for properties that have a kerbside FOGO service. This includes single-unit dwellings that received their FOGO bin at the start of 2023 and multi-unit dwellings that will be included in the service from mid-2023.

  We are changing our garbage collection services to increase the amount of waste we divert from landfill and reduce our impact on the environment. The percentage of food and garden waste we produce in our garbage stream lies at around 46 per cent. We are aiming to maximise landfill diversion by encouraging residents to use their kerbside FOGO service for all household food and garden waste.

  We understand that there may be some confusion in the beginning, therefore residents will be provided a fridge magnet collection calendar to help remember the collection days, and the frequency of services. We also understand that some households may struggle with a fortnightly garbage service so households can request a free bin upsize if they meet the following criteria: six or more people residing in one house, children in nappies, or a person with a medical condition which results in additional waste.

  The ‘Don’t Waste It!’ Waste Management Strategy 2022-25 stated that the change to fortnightly garbage was going to occur in mid-2023 for single-unit dwellings that received a kerbside FOGO service in January 2023. However, it has been delayed to allow Council to transition both single-unit dwellings and multi-unit dwellings to fortnightly garbage at the same time, and ensure residents have sufficient time to prepare for the transition.

• I’d like to know more about the changes to waste charges to car park spaces.

• Across the municipality there are approximately 5,000 separately titled car parks, garages and storage spaces. This excludes the commercial car parks purely for trading such as Care or Wilsons Carparks. While being separately titled, they are often packaged with other properties therefore the following rebates exist:

  1. Residential One Occupancy waste rebate - 100% Rebate of Default Waste Charge

  Owners of these properties are already paying a waste charge on their residential property and do not create additional waste by this separate titled property (car space, storage unit etc).

  The current principle is that they shouldn't have to pay multiple default waste charge where resides.

  2. Commercial One Occupancy waste rebate - 90% Rebate of Default Waste Charge

  Owners of these properties are already paying a waste charge so should not pay the waste charge twice.

  But they do not receive a full rebate because commercial properties are likely to increase incidental waste generation from their activities. They also have access to cardboard collection and communal FOGO hubs.

  3. Carparks/Storage areas with no affiliation with another ratepaying property receive no rebate and must pay the full default waste change.

• Why is there an increase of $22.00 in the default waste charge?

• This cost increase of $22.00 includes the State landfill levy increase of 8 per cent, inflation and the shared cost of FOGO collection across multi-unit dwellings and communal hubs.