And now, Episode 3 in our series on the Council meeting of 13 April 2022.  This one is going to cut straight to the money.

If I asked you to sell me your house for what it was worth 2 years ago, does that sound like a good deal?  Yep it sounds like an unbelievable deal for me as the buyer, but a pretty rubbish deal for you as the seller, particularly with the current boom in house prices.  . 

Yet it’s quite possible that’s what Council did when it agreed to sell the block of land at 365 Emu Swamp Road to Granite Belt Water.  Discussions in Council about the sale referred to a valuation from July 2020, almost 2 years ago, and well before the recent surge in house prices.  Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

The Emu Swamp Dam project has been going for decades.  It will likely be years before Granite Belt Water have the money to purchase this land and the 450 megalitre of town water allocation: as far as we can see (the new funding terms are not what you would call “open and transparent”) these acquisition costs are not covered by government funding.  So any decent dealmaker would ensure that the value of the assets sold is determined as and when the sales take place.    

It seems that in the confidential session of its 13 April meeting, Council may similarly have committed to selling the 450 megalitre of town water allocation to Granite Belt Water at today’s prices.  Just like the block of land.  If this is the case then, come an actual sale in a few years’ time, it seems unlikely that the community will be getting value for money for its asset.

Council has released the valuation for the block of land and a valuation “report” (not an actual valuation) for the water allocation.  We don’t even know if the other 2 “valuations” are, in fact, valuations by a registered valuer.  We will only be able to assess this once they’re made public.  

So why won’t Council release these “valuations”?  In my view it is essential that the valuations plus the terms of the Water Rights Option Deed are made public.  Ratepayers need to be satisfied that the Council is getting value for money for our assets.  At the very least Council should confirm that the value of the assets will be determined at the appropriate time, i.e. when the assets are actually being sold. 

Otherwise we’re all going to wonder why Council can’t be open about the sale of a very valuable public asset.  My money’s on the price being higher than the previous report (which was $2,500 to $3,400 per ML).  I could be wrong, but seems to me that if the price was lower then there’d be no reason to keep it secret, would there?