Granny flats put rates bill up $945

Manukau City Council has slugged 1700 ratepayers an extra $945 in rates to cover extra dwellings on their properties.

The ratepayers, spread across "pretty well every suburb in the city", have until next Thursday to settle the debt, or make payment arrangements, chief financial officer Geoff Foster said this week.

The additional rates owing - identified during a regular review of rates database information - total $1.6 million and cover the 2005-2006 financial year.

"We regularly review the database information to double-check that information such as additional dwellings are accounted for in the rates billing," Mr Foster said in a statement issued this week.

The extra rates bills are geared to bring those who have added household units, flats, or granny-flats to their properties into line with other ratepayers.

The council database review was timed to coincide with Quotable Value's three-yearly individual property revaluation.

The $945 demand is a "standard charge per dwelling", council spokeswoman Helen Slater said yesterday, and is made up of a $481 uniform general charge covering items such as library resources, a $151 refuse collection charge and $313 sewerage fee.

"Those people would be paying that for their existing dwelling. That's what everybody pays on each dwelling."

The properties involved have previously been rated for single dwellings on the land rather than two, or in some cases three, dwellings.

"The 1700 ratepayers involved will be rated for the full amount for this year," Mr Foster said.

All the properties identified as owing rates are residential, and anyone struggling to pay the $945 bill can talk to council staff about time-payment arrangements, he said.

Mangere Bridge Residents and Ratepayers' Association chairman Ken Taylor was philosophical about the extra rates bill.

Though he could see the council's right to impose the fee, $945 was a lot of money for people in low-income areas of the city to pay.

"I suppose, if it is a separate dwelling as such, they are probably within their rights ... there's not much you can do about it."

However, he believed the charge was indicative of "what is happening in the way they are formulating their rating policies now".