It’s exactly what happened to over 3,500 retirement village residents living on the NSW Central Coast.
The residents had been hit with huge hikes in water, sewerage and drainage charges last year after being under-billed for the previous three years by the former Gosford Council.
Figures from one Coast village showed the levies were $31,827, before dropping to $9550 in 2015 and then jumping to a $68,641 in 2016, a huge 116 per cent increase.
The charges had then been passed onto residents, many pensioners living on fixed incomes.
Taking up the fight
Faced with the huge bills, the residents and their operators decided to fight back – a meeting of residents and managers from 45 retirement villages in March resulted in two petitions that received hundreds of signatures.
One called for the Gosford and Wyong Councils to change the policy that prevents residents accessing rebates; the other urged the State Government to allow Coast residents to get the same rebate as Sydney and Hunter Valley residents.
The Coast residents are ineligible for the usual rebates as they are classified as commercial, rather than residential, customers.
A change for the better
Now they are celebrating after the newly formed Central Coast Council agreed to waive over half of their water service charges for the next financial year – an average of $142 each.
The costs will be absorbed by the Council, with Administrator Ian Reynolds saying they will also work towards a fairer pricing structure for the residents going forward.
“It’s not necessarily about the money, it’s more about the fact we have been listened to,” Living Choice Alloura Waters resident Garry Tucker told the Express Advocate.
