On Tuesday 5th October Yarra Council voted 4-4 (4 Greens vs all the other Councillors) to implement the HIGHEST parklet fees in Victoria.

The Melbourne hospitality industry has been under financial strain throughout the pandemic and the implementation of necessary health restrictions have impacted recovery and created a sense of uncertainty. With that in mind, local hospitality business owners find the current parklet fee model to be exorbitant and the tiered structure flawed and unrealistic. Particularly during such precarious times. We seek your support to challenge this verdict and have all decisions on parklet-related council fees postponed until the economy has stabilised.

The introduction of parklets to the Yarra community has been a well received initiative with 84% of community members surveyed believing parklets to be a better use of public space. Parklets allow businesses to provide COVID safe working and dining environments for staff and customers. In addition they create a wonderful al fresco dining experience that adds to the outdoor atmosphere on our streets. However this should not allow for financial exploitation of local venues.

Upon consideration, the majority of parklet holders within Yarra Council realise that fees are necessary for use of public land. However, we believe that no effort has been made by the acting Greens administration to accommodate discrepancies in venue capacity and business owner’s ability to pay parklet fees in addition to current council rates. We seek to set a precedent by challenging this “one-size-fits-all” model that is based on geographical location and not capacity limit.

The tiered fee structure as follows: 

a) Primary Streets $5000 per parking space 

b) Secondary Streets $3000 per parking space

c) Residential Streets $2250 per parking space

The fees are the most exorbitant in the state and the tiered fee structure is flawed. Council’s argument is that they wish to avoid "over complicating" the tiered fee structure. This is not good enough. It’s the job of council officers to conduct thorough research on these matters, and they have failed. It would appear the Council officers have cherry picked businesses they have approached in order to collate more favourable data.   

Example: a small venue on a primary street with a capacity of 40 people (reduced to 10 people with government enforced capacity limitations) will pay substantially higher fees than a pub around the corner with a capacity of 500+ on a residential street.

Basing fees on geographical location over capacity limitation is false economy. It's ensuring that little venues will bear the financial brunt of these fees. The fees are disproportionate and need to be re-examined. Small venues should not be financially penalised due to their location.  

Fees of all nature should be structured according to payees capacity and Yarra Council should set a precedent in this case. It is our intention, with the backing of hospitality venues and the local community, to raise these issues to council in the hopes that they will reconsider their current proposal. We would encourage the council to seek further funding from State Government and re-examine the current fee structure, holding off on any further decisions until March 2022.

Thank you for your time