Charity to pay council court costs of $146,000

from page 1 by Tim Howard that I was being bullied by,” she said.

“I also would like to apologise to the Clarence Valley Limited residents.

“You were caught up in the middle of this. It’s such a shame that the tenants had to endure this and it was really sad for me to have residents that I knew that were coming to me crying and then blaming me for it.”

In his judgment, Mr Preston said

By Samantha Elley

Democracy is alive and well in the riverside village of Woodburn with a new Labor branch soon to be established.

Hemlock’s Books and Coffee House owner Samuel Allis has started the ball rolling by asking around to see what interest is out there.

“It’s great we live in a country where there was a difference between rates and charges. He ruled the council was charging for sewerage services, but levying rates. Charities could avoid rates, but not charges.

The council revealed its revenue team had been auditing its rates and charges for a number of years and detected some anomalies.

It had made amendments and issued supplementary notices to correct them.

Clarence Village Limited expressed its concern regarding the amended notices issued and sent a letter of complaint requesting an exemption.

This request for exemption was presented to council at its February 28 meeting last year and Clarence Village CEO Duncan McKimm, made a deputation. The council resolution on the matter was to defer a decision to allow continued negotiations, however, the council opinion was the correct charging methodology had been applied.

On the May 16, council was served a Summons and prepared its response to the summons.

Meanwhile the council said its internal audits were close to completion.

The domestic waste internal audit has been completed and the water and sewerage internal audit was 80% complete with the remainder of the audit to recommence, now that council has received judgment in these proceedings.

The internal audit

Labor branch to open in Woodburn

we can participate in our democracy,” Mr Allis said.

“I was thinking to myself one day ‘these bastards must meet somewhere’ and after ringing around it turns out they did, so I signed up to the Labor party and it’s me and the grandmas now.

“And they’re wonderful, there’s the odd older fellow but mostly its our nannas that are holding the good fort.”

Mr Allis said he learnt at the frst meeting that anyone could write a motion to propose an idea to the government. “I’ve bopped in