For Central Otago irrigation scheme owners, there is good news and bad news.
The bad news is irrigation schemes have been valued by Quotable Value this year, so they now become rateable entities; the good news is the first rates bills are likely to be remitted.
Only about half of the irrigation schemes in the district have been identified and valued by QV, so the ''inconsistent approach'' could be viewed as iniquitous, the Central Otago District Council's acting chief financial officer, Andrew Griffiths, says in a report to be considered by the council today.
''Due to these valuations being provided at such a late date, council did not have the opportunity to engage with this sector in respect of its rates nor have these ratepayers been given opportunity to object to their rateable values before rates are set.
"Not all irrigation schemes have been valued yet, which creates inequity in how we charge rates,'' he said.
The council was told earlier this year the Valuer-general intended applying rateable values to irrigation schemes but the schemes were not valued until June 30.
The council was then obliged to assess and set rates for those schemes this financial year.
Mr Griffiths said eight schemes were valued but the council was aware of a further seven that had not been valued.
Land values and capital values were assessed for each of those eight schemes.
''The inclusion of land value certainly raises questions since all other utilities, such as Transpower, Vodafone, Powernet, etc, are valued purely on capital value since the land over which their networks exist is already rated.''
The council had a policy of remitting anomalous or iniquitous rates increases and he recommended it take that action.
Rates had already been struck before the irrigation valuations were known, so if the council decided to collect those rates, it would ''over-collect''.
The council had not budgeted to get any income from irrigation schemes in the coming financial year.
Any inequities in values were likely to be sorted out in the coming year.
Remitting this year's rates on irrigation schemes would allow a ''business as usual'' approach and give the scheme owners time to object to the values and time for the council to discuss the matter with them and consider other rating options, he said.
