Alpine Shire councillors have unanimously voted to recognise their recent unintentional non-compliance to the rate cap for 2025-26 and adjust the shire's 2026-27 financial year's rating assessment calculation by 0.96 per cent.

Council's decision followed Alpine Shire CEO, Will Jeremy, explanation during the December 16 council meeting, of how council had unintentionally breached the state imposed maximum rate cap, due to system changes to rate cap measuring software used by the shire.

Each year the Minister for Local Government sets a statewide maximum rate cap for the following rating year by general order: for 2025/26 the rate cap was set at three per cent.

In March 2025, Council’s Revenue and Rating Plan provided for a change to the differential rating strategy for a small proportion of properties in Dinner Plain.

In preparing for this change, council sought assistance from a software vendor who advised system changes could be made well in advance of 1 July 2025 and would not affect the rate modelling figures.

This unfortunately resulted in the rating category change of 245 properties being enacted prior to the 2025/26 financial year, resulting in a net neutral financial impact to council, but causing the rate cap to be exceeded, which was identified by the Essential Services Commission during their annual Council Rate Cap Compliance Report, released 2 December, 2025.

As a result, $168,713 was raised in additional council rates, equating to an average of $18.50 per property.

During last month's council meeting, Councillor Dave Byrne asked if it would be possible to refund $18.50 to each property.

Mr Jeremy said this would result in an inequitable outcome for property owners.

"$18.50 is the amount we’ve overcharged the average ratepayer," he said.

"If you have a property valued more than the average, you’ve been charged by more than the average; and if you have a property less than the average value, it’s less.

“If we were to just take 9000 properties and send out a cheque for $18 to every property it wouldn’t result in an equitable outcome for our ratepayers.”

Alpine Shire Mayor, Sarah Nicholas asked to clarify the impact of any interest gathered on the $18.50.

Council director of corporate and community, Nathalie Cooke, said interest was considered in quite some detail.

“The way the rectification will occur in 2026-27, is across the whole of the rating pool, it is not an an individual assessment level," Ms Cooke said.

“When we’ve tried to balance those calculations, what would work and how it would apply to an individual assessment level; the amount of administration and work which would be required in order to enact that, is really quite difficult.

“We have determined at this time, not to recommend the repayment of interest on that amount."

Ms Cooke said council is developing an internal procedure for how to make bulk changes in the system for future rate adjustments.

"[These] will assist us in ensuring the lessons from this [occurrence] are not lost and so we can ensure if we're required to make significant changes to our database, we are in a better position to understand the system requirements for that," she said.

"[However], there is no anticipation of us making a change like this again in our database; this is a reasonably unique situation."