UPDATE 1.30pm: The Mount Alexander and Macedon Ranges shires have added their voices to calls for the state government to pump the breaks on changes to the way property valuations are conducted.

Mount Alexander Shire corporate and community services director Lisa Knight said it was “staggering that the government would include this in proposed legislation without first consulting with councils”.

She said the council could not see how the proposal would benefit the community or improve ratepayers’ confidence in the valuation process.

“Along with other local councils, Mount Alexander Shire is calling on the state government to revoke its proposal to hand responsibility for land valuations to the valuer-general and conduct them annually rather than every two years,” she said.

“There has been a lack of transparency in relation to these proposed changes and very little consultation with councils.”

Macedon Ranges Shire mayor Jennifer Anderson said she had written to the state government expressing her concerns about the lack of consultation.

“Because it hasn’t been structured we don’t quite know how they’re going to work it out, we can’t really know the full implications but it’s very likely that jobs may be lost because we employ our own valuers,” she said.

“We just don’t know because there’s no structure around it but it’s likely it’ll end up costing us money.”

UPDATE 1pm: Central Goldfields Shire mayor Geoff Lovett has called on the state government to fully-fund the cost of proposed changes to property valuations or move towards a four-year cycle instead.

“This has been mandated by the government, I believe, without any or very little consultation with local government and we would be totally against it,” he said.

“In fact there’s a counter-proposal by a number of rural shires, which we would be very supportive of and in fact that is going from the current two-year valuations to every four years.

Cr Lovell said the government’s plan to conduct property evaluations every year would double the cost of the services to council which represented “a cost impost that we just couldn’t bear”.

“If we do that annually it’s fair to assume the price doubles so you’re looking at $65,000 a year,” he said.

“To put it into perspective, that’s about 1.5 per cent of a rate rise for a shire the size of ours and we’ve already been hit with rate capping.”

Cr Lovell said “if the government are going to mandate this, the government should fund it”.

“It’s just another example of cost shifting which has an impact on councils, particularly the smaller rural councils, and if the state government wants to go to annual revaluations let them totally fund it and take the impost away from the council,” he said.

Loddon Shire mayor Neil Beattie also back the four-year model, saying the council was “not one bit keen on the track the government’s taken”.

Cr Beattie said evaluations cost Loddon $150,000 every two years and the cost of increasing the frequency would be “extreme”.

“Because we don’t have a big fluctuation in values four years would be fine for us,” he said.

“It’s come out of the blue a bit but that’s what government’s do.”

Earlier this month the Municipal Association of Victoria state council supported a call for small rural shires to move to a revaluation cycle every four years, and president Mary Lalios said the move would allow councils to reinvest the savings.

“Small rural shires have limited changes in property valuations, and moving to four-yearly valuations would save rural councils the equivalent of a 1 to 2 per cent rate increase,” she said.

“Those councils could reinvest that money back into local services or vital road upgrades.”

EARLIER: The City of Greater Bendigo is calling on the state government to reverse planned changes to the way properties are valued, warning of job losses and multimillion-dollar costs to rate-payers.

The city’s corporate performance director Kerryn Ellis said the move could result in a hit to council coffers of more than $2 million a year in additional expenses and lost revenue.

Under the current system, the council conducts its own property valuations in-house every two years, but the state government’s proposal would see the work centralised within the valuer-general’s office in Melbourne and require valuations to be done annually.

Ms Ellis said the council’s valuations budget, which currently sits at about $500,000 per year, would likely blow out under the proposed changes.

“Based on logic, given we haven’t had a lot of detail come through, we can only assume the cost of doing them annually could be anything up to double the current costs,” she said.

“The other challenge is we also do supplementary valuations throughout the year and those supplementary valuations realise a fair bit of additional income for us in Greater Bendigo, it can be up to $1.6 million a year so I can’t imagine the valuer-general is going to send a valuer up here to do one valuation every time we want a supplementary [valuation] done so I can’t imagine that’ll be done in a cost-effective way for councils.

“In a rate-capping environment it’s another source of income that’s withdrawn from local government.”

On top of the financial impost, Ms Ellis said eight local jobs would be lost to Melbourne if the changes went ahead, with the closure of the city’s valuations department resulting in redundancies for its five valuers and three administration staff.

“Obviously if valuations are no longer part of what we do those positions wouldn’t be required anymore, so we’d lose staff and we’d obviously have to bear the cost of redundancy payments as well,” she said.

Ms Ellis said the loss of the local staff would also result in a lower level of service delivery for Bendigo rate-payers.

“If people have queries, we send valuers out on site to meet with them personally, generally within a day or two, so we find it very unlikely that a centralised valuation system run from Melbourne would able to offer anything like that level of service and they certainly won’t have that level of local knowledge,” she said.

Earelier this month, Bendigo mayor Margaret O’Rourke described the changes as having come as “a bit of a surprise” to the council, during a question and answer session with Premier Daniel Andrews.

At the time, Mr Andrews acknowledged the change would be “a challenge” for local governments, but said the state would work with councils during the “lead in” time prior to the plan taking effect.

“We need to acknowledge that the kind of bill shock that comes with the bi-annual land tax assessment – that we can do much, much better than that,” he said.

“We think just having a much more contemporary understanding of movements in the market, year on year, rather than every two years, is a much better way to go.”

But Ms Ellis said one of the biggest concerns the city had about the move was what the city saw as a lack of consultation by the state government.

“Our very strong message is that this change has gotten all the way to the stage of being presented in parliament as proposed legislation with absolutely no consultation with the sector at all,” she said.

“Our primary request is for heaven’s sake please consult with the sector, we’ve got a lot of knowledge about valuations, local government’s been delivering valuations in Victoria for 100 years, please consult with us because we understand just how it’ll affect council, but also how it’ll affect the community.”

The comments come after the Municipal Association of Victoria slammed the changes as having “a range of serious impacts that don’t seem to have been considered by the state government”.

“It is unlikely that the different supplementary valuation needs of each council could be met by the valuer-general at a reasonable price, which could create a lag in council revenue,” MAV president Mary Lalios said.

“Parliament should halt these reforms until the consequences are clearly understood and suitable solutions are identified to minimise the impacts facing communities.”

A government spokesman said the move to annual property valuations had come in response to community concerns about “bill shock” caused by two-yearly valuations and would smooth out any increases or decreases in tax liabilities.

He said it would not increase revenue collected from council rates.

“Centralising processes under the management of the valuer-general is expected to improve the efficiency, consistency and transparency of property valuations in Victoria,” he said.

“The government is currently working with the Municipal Association of Victoria on implementing this reform.”