BALLARAT City Mayor Joshua Morris has vowed to ensure the success of a new saleyards development within the city as surrounding municipalities show rival interest in the proposed development.
A planning submission deadline for the new Central Victoria Livestock Exchange (CVLX) saleyards at the flagged Miners Rest site is looming, and Cr Morris said it was critically important the planning submission succeeded.
"We are saying we know how important (Ballarat saleyards) is because we hear it from residents on a daily basis and we know that municipalities around us want to build a saleyards if our proposal within the city of Ballarat doesn't go forward," he said.
"We are critically aware that we need to work closely with the (RIPL) application and broader community so that we, the City of Ballart, does retain the benefit of a successful saleyards."
Council expects to receive a planning submission for the new CVLX site (which has been managed by Regional Infrastructure Proprietary Limited (RIPL) since May 2010) by the end of June.
However, Cr Morris warned that if a planning permit was not lodged within the three-month deadline, council would "seriously need to look at where we are going to go from here".
According to CVLX, the saleyards has a 10-year throughput average of more than 1.3 million sheep and 56,000 cattle.
"We have a contract with RIPL that has an end date which I believe is coming up soon - as a council we need to resolve where we are going to go in regard to that contract," Cr Morris said.
However, he said council was confident it would see a planning application before the contract deadline, following recent discussions with RIPL.
"From my perspective we have an operator of our saleyards and we have a party that has indicated it is willing to lodge a planning application in the near future - I am looking forward to (receiving) the planning application and progressing from there," Mr Morris said.
Recent concept plans have been rejected by industry because of the lack of capacity and insufficient loading ramps; however, no formal application has been lodged.
Cr Morris rejected agents' and producers' calls for council to ensure throughput capacity was maintained.
"I think one of the important things to note that has been lost is that we as council have a semi-judicial role in determining planning applications," he said.
"We can't come to a pre-determined view on a planning application; we have to judge a planning application in its merits to meet the law.
"We don't have the ability, under law, to say to an application that this saleyard is too small (so) you can't build it, because if we were to do that we would be effectively breaking the law."