Thousands facing court over rates

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Thousands of people face being dragged to court in the New Year for not paying their Auckland Regional Council rates, says City Vision councillor Mike Lee.

Once in court, the ARC is likely to seek powers to sell people's homes to recover unpaid rates.

Looming court action follows figures released by the ARC on Monday showing that 85,294 ratepayers have not paid their bills.

It also follows the announcement last night by the Minister of Local Government, Chris Carter, that there were no legal grounds to order a review of the ARC as requested by regional ratepayers rebellion spokesman David Thornton.

So far, 81 per cent of the ARC's 448,914 ratepayers have paid their rates since the council adopted a business-friendly rating policy leading to household increases as high as 657 per cent.

Mr Lee said the ARC should be contemplating an amnesty, and Team West councillor Sandra Coney said she wanted nothing to do with pursuing people through the courts or approaching mortgage holders.

She was particularly concerned at figures showing one-in-four households in the poorer areas of Waitakere and Manukau were unable or unwilling to pay their rates.

But Auckland Citizens & Ratepayers Now councillor Judith Bassett said the ARC could not let people feel they could "lie on their backs with their paws in the air and think the whole thing will go away" when others had struggled to pay.



Finance director Tony Darby said council officers would not take anyone to court without first checking with councillors.

He said it appeared that lower value households were slower to pay rates than higher value households, but in Manukau and Waitakere the larger number of unpaid rates was skewed by a data error.

The council has started chasing unpaid bills by sending out letters saying a 10 per cent late penalty has been added with a reminder to pay within 14 days.

The letter does not tell ratepayers legal action for unpaid rates cannot start until four months after the due date of payment. This is December 7 at the earliest for Rodney and North Shore ratepayers.

The ARC plans to send ratepayers three letters as reminders before starting any formal proceedings.

Mr Carter said the ARC had made an unpopular decision in setting the rates but legally it did not amount to significant mismanagement.

The decision was challenged by Mr Thornton at last night's Te Atatu Ratepayers Association annual meeting.

He said a confederation of ratepayers associations should be formed to "continue battling" against the ARC rates system.

What the law says

The minister can review a local authority's affairs if:

* There has been a significant or persistent failure by the local authority to meet its obligations under the act or any other act.

* There has been significant and identifiable mismanagement of the resources of the local authority.

* There is a significant and identifiable deficiency in the management or decision-making processes of the local authority.

- Local Government Act

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