Poor tax bust-up

By Ed Merrison
A PROPOSED garbage charge designed to even out rates across Knox has been slammed as ‘a tax on the poor’.
Dobson Ward councillor Karin Orpen launched her attack on the main plank of the council’s proposed budget for next year which would see retirement villages slugged with a 41 per cent rate increase.
Under the plan all residents will pay a charge of $116 for waste collection as part of their rates which will be incorporated into a planned 3 per cent rate increase.
The row has split the council as newly elected councillors push to reform the council’s rates structure.
Cr Orpen, the council’s longest serving current member, made her comments after a special meeting of the council on Tuesday, 16 May saw a majority of five councillors vote to put the Knox City Council Proposed Budget 2006-07 out for public consultation.
The vote split the council between the three survivors from the previous council and new councillors backed by ratepayer group the Knox Reform Coalition (KRC).
Councillors Karin Orpen, Mick Van de Vreede and Adam Gill voiced strong opposition to the proposed budget.
The group of KRC backed councillors say budget aims to ease the burden on those ratepayers whose rates had risen sharply because of the previous council’s move to a capital improved value (CIV) rates system.
Cr Orpen said burying the waste charge within the budget denied ratepayers the chance to assess its effect, and said evening out rates in this way greatly disadvantaged those who could least afford them.
Under the proposed model, Bayswater would receive the highest average rate increase of 7.58 per cent, followed by Upper Ferntree Gully with a 7.19 per cent increase, then The Basin (6.67) Ferntree Gully (6.46) and Boronia (5.83).
Cr Orpen said these were areas where 67 per cent of the municipality’s war veterans and pensioners receiving the State rebate lived, and also the suburbs with the lowest median household income, according to 2001 Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
“You can see quite clearly that the people with the lowest incomes receive the biggest hit on the head,” she said.
“That’s why we are referring to it as a poor tax, because it does hit the most vulnerable people in our community, no question.”
Cr Van de Vreede said without the garbage charge, a 3.03 per cent increase with the property revaluations that have taken place would have led to a highest average rate increase of 2.74 per cent for any suburb.
“Under the proposed budget there’s a 7.09 per cent increase for pensioners.
“If the rate structure was left as (it) is, the increase would be 0.26 per cent average across the suburbs,” he said.
But Knox mayor David Cooper hit back at the ‘poor tax’ allegations.
“I think that comment was totally irresponsible and I totally reject it and condemn it because it’s absolutely incorrect.
“A uniform charge to each property is considered a more equitable approach to providing (the waste) service,” he said.
Cr Cooper said CIV had initially resulted in ‘horrendous’ rate increases for many residents.
“(Crs Orpen, Van de Vreede and Gill) are people who were elected who in 2003 and introduced the CIV system that saw thousands of peoples’ rates go through the roof and had thousands of people take up a petition to the State Government to have them dismissed,” he said.
Cr Cooper said the current council had tried to redress the balance while having as small an impact as possible on other residents.
“But to walk away and say I’m going to do nothing, I would be breaking my commitment to the thousands of ratepayers that have supported me over the last three years,” he said.
However, Crs Orpen and Van de Vreede said they would push for the council to change its view.
“We don’t believe this is right so we’re going to fight,” Cr Van de Vreede said.