The mayor has reiterated council’s policy on refunding money for overcharged bin services, stressing that if affected residents were reimbursed for 10 years or even more, it would put pressure on rates.
A number of residents in the Mountains discovered last year, when they received more than one green bin, that they had been charged for two or more bin services.
Some have traced back the overpayments to the mid 1990s, when the waste service was listed separately on rate notices.
Most assumed that the “2” under the number of services referred to the two bins they had – one for garbage and one for recycling.
Council is legally obliged to refund for only one year of overcharging but councillors voted at the February meeting to extend that to a period of five years.
A motion moved by Crs Kevin Schreiber and Brendan Christie to repay for 10 years was defeated by eight votes to four.
The mayor, Mark Greenhill, told the Gazette that while there were 326 properties with multiple bin services, it was incorrect to infer they had all been overcharged. Many had requested more than one bin.
“The vast majority are being charged correctly,” he said. “On the other hand, over 30,000 households could face a possible rate rise if the minority view of the councillors [for 10 years of repayments] prevailed.”
Although there is $350,000 in a waste reserve contingency fund, the mayor said some of that had to be retained in case of emergency, such as another bushfire.
He also said there was no way to estimate exactly what full repayments, or even 10-year repayments, might cost as not all claims for overcharging had necessarily been lodged with council.
“Importantly, while this issue is not entirely of council’s making, we are taking shared responsibility to address it by increasing our pay out of legitimate claims up to five years. That is many times the statutory requirement.
“We are also making sure the rates notice is as clear as possible to avoid any further potential for confusion.”