Queanbeyan Councillors say NSW Minister cant solve rates crisis By David Butler Sept. 8, 2014, 5:21 p.m. THE NSW Minister for Local Government is unlikely to intervene and single-handedly fix Queanbeyan’s backdated rates problem, according to two Councillors who attended a meeting with him last week. Queanbeyan Mayor Tim Overall led a delegation of Councillors including Jamie Cregan, Brian Brown, Sue Whelan and Council’s acting general manager, Kerry McMurray to meet with Minister Paul Toole in Sydney last Friday. They were seeking a possible legislative solution to write-off $3.7 million in backdated rates charges issued by Council to some Queanbeyan ratepayers in July While the Mayor said in a short statement last week that the meeting had been “mutually constructive,” Crs Cregan and Brown told The Queanbeyan Age today that a resolution to the ongoing rates crisis was unlikely to come in the form of a legislative change from the NSW Government. “I think it was very clear very early on in the meeting that in regards to changing regulations and the like, they’re just not going to go down that road,” Cr Brown said. “The fact is the NSW Local government Act is actually being reviewed right at this very moment, and to change one regulation, no matter how small, opens the concern that you could be impacting on something that’s unforeseen and open a can of worms that no one really wants to go down.” Cr Cregan said he took a similar impression from the meeting. “They were sympathetic towards us, but they were clearly stating they didn’t want to put in a regulation change on this issue because of the consequences or abuse that could be created elsewhere,” he said. However both Councillors said they took heart from indications that the NSW Government wouldn’t challenge a Council resolution to write off the notices should pending legal advice from a Senior Counsel (SC) identify problems in how the invoices were issued under the Act. “The positive thing was that they seemed to be receptive to Council making decisions based on the legal advice they get,” Cr Brown said. See your ad here “At the end of the day it’s up to councillors to make a decision on which way they’re going to go, and certainly I think that the option that some councillors have put forward in regards to taking legal advice that the rates issues could be made invalid is one that I’m willing to progress.” Cr Cregan said he believed that the legal advice he tabled at last a Council meeting last month- commissioned from local firm Boettcher Law- was credible enough to allow Councillors to write the rates off outright. However that motion has been deferred to allow Queanbeyan City Council to refer the two existing sets of legal advice provided on this matter to be reviewed by an SC, who will report back to Council later this week. “We can write this off without a regulation change, but we’re now relying on advice from that senior counsel,” Cr Cregan said.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 10:06:37 +0000
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