The South Burnett Regional Council will “name and shame” 43 ratepayers next month prior to seizing their properties – and in some cases, their homes – and putting them on the market to recover overdue rates.
The ratepayers owe a combined $305,000 and are more than three years in arrears, the Council was told at its monthly meeting today.
As well, they’ve all refused to try to come to some arrangement to pay off their debt, despite repeated attempts by the Council to get them to do so.
“Council is now faced with only one option: selling these properties to recover the outstanding rates,” Cr Keith Campbell said. “And a report will be on next month’s Council Meeting Agenda seeking formal approval to commence recovery action.”
If this is passed, then notices will be served on the ratepayers, who must then either pay their whole debt within three months or sales action would proceed.
“I urge ratepayers who are in this situation to call Council on (07) 4189-9100 to make an arrangement to pay the rates within a satisfactory time frame,” Cr Campbell said.
“This is very important because if the properties go to sale then Council is obliged under the Local Government Act to set a reserve price for them that either equals the unimproved value or the outstanding rates, whichever is higher.
“This could result in a very significant loss of capital value for the ratepayer, especially if the property has improvements on it such as a building or a dwelling.”
Mayor Wayne Kratzmann agreed that the situation was “very unfortunate”.
“Having worked in local government myself, I know that while Councils have the legal authority to seize and sell a ratepayer’s property to recover overdue rates, it’s an unhappy situation that everyone would prefer to avoid,” he said.
The Mayor added that when properties were seized, most defaulters lost heavily on the deal.
He knew that some of the properties in question had houses on them, which meant that the ratepayers would be losing their homes as well as their land if they failed to act before proceedings began.
Council is obliged under the Local Government Act to take recovery action, even though extreme defaulters represent only a small percentage of the 17,632 rate notices issued each year.
