Hume council will explore ways in which it can reduce the growing rate arrears across the municipality.
In September, council revealed the municipality’s rate arrears had risen to $45.75 million.
In response, Cr Kate Hamley raised a notice of motion at the 24 November council meeting, asking council to address rates hardship.
Cr Hamley also sought to seek clarification on when the state government would finalise its Rates Hardship Guidelines, so a review of council’s Rates Financial Hardship Policy could be completed.
She also recommended exploring further measures to incentivise entry into payment plans for ratepayers who are experiencing financial hardship, including scoping a pilot project to collect data on what financial incentives could help reduce the number of accounts entering arrears.
Under Cr Hamley’s proposal, council would also directly engage with affected ratepayers to find the reasons why they have not paid their rates, and present findings back to a council meeting with recommendations on how council can address the core issues.
Cr Hamley said rate arrears will likely be an ongoing issue.
“While Hume’s hardship policy offers some additional options for people experiencing hardship, including the waiving of interest on debts, there’s an opportunity to look further into the issues that actually cause people to fall behind on payments in the first place and have a look at the options that might be available to us to help them,” she said.
“So many Hume households are surviving on low to very low incomes which has to be taken into consideration within our hardship policy.”
Cr Hamley said the current Rates Financial Hardship policy needs to take the current situation with housing and cost of living crises into consideration.
“Our existing options really don’t make rates much more affordable. The cost stays the same. It just sort of slices it up differently,” she said.
“So allowing for targeted consultation with affected residents will provide us the opportunity to collect some really good qualitative and quantitative data that we can then use to make some really informed decisions and test some new ideas to find evidence-based solutions that work for all of our community.”
