Page 177 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 6 March 2007
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mechanism by which the city centre marketing and improvements levy will be collected. As its name suggests, the levy will provide funds for a marketing and improvements program for the centre of Canberra.
The levy will be used to position the Canberra city centre as the premier retail, commercial and residential precinct in the ACT, something which I believe we all aspire to and which has been the subject of a long, detailed and very inclusive debate through promotion, marketing and events programs. It will coordinate and harness private and public sector skills. It will achieve an attractive, dynamic, vital, liveable place where businesses and community prosper. It will achieve a clean, safe and attractive city centre by complementing existing government services, and it will encourage the private sector to maintain a high standard of public-private interface. And the Liberal Party wishes to oppose all these hopes and aspirations.
The ACT Planning and Land Authority has been responsible for the development of the policy surrounding the administration and distribution of the funds collected. The levy was previously announced as the city heart levy in the 2005-06 budget and was then estimated on the basis of the proposal that it would achieve a collection of around $2.5 million. However, after quite significant and close consultation with property owners within the collection area, the revenue target and the start date for the levy have been revised. The levy will be collected from 1 July and is expected to raise $1.4 million.
The money will be appropriated to ACTPLA who, as the Minister for Planning has indicated, will then distribute it directly through a grant program to a not-for-profit business entity. The business entity must comply with certain eligibility and selection criteria, some of which will require obvious and demonstrable representation of all the levy payers. Those bidding for the grant are required to submit a number of documents, including a draft five-year strategic plan and a financial plan. The successful business entity will be required to finalise its draft strategic plan and thereafter submit annual business plans and progress reports.
The performance of the successful business entity will be measured against these documents throughout the five-year grant period. The grant program will be administered by a grant management committee. There will be one open round for the city marketing and improvements grant. The round which will last for five years will provide the successful business entity with the certainty required to realise its five-year strategic plan. The grant will be paid to the successful business entity on an annual basis.
My department’s sole responsibility is for the collection of the levy. As the Assembly is already aware this bill provides a mechanism to allow that to occur. Schedule 1 of the Rates Act already contains a mechanism to impose levies under the act and it was a logical step to add this levy to that schedule. In addition, it will make the levy a law administered under the existing legal framework of such matters within the ACT. The levy is an annual charge on commercial property owners raised as a percentage of the average unimproved value of commercial land within the division of city, and certain commercial areas in Braddon and Turner.
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