The Katherine Town Council is owed almost $25,000 is unpaid fines from the last two months alone.
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According to Council's Financial Report for the month of October 2021, a mammoth number of infringements related to animals and parking have gone unpaid.
By the end of September, Council was owed $8917 in unpaid animal-related fines, and $2873 in unpaid parking fines.
For October, unpaid animal fines totalled $9065 and parking fines totalled $2774.
Katherine Town Council Director of Corporate Services Kerry Whiting told the Council meeting on Thursday night that retrieving unpaid fines had been a longstanding challenge.
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"They've certainly been a challenge, I understand, for Katherine Town Council for a number of years," he said.
"It's always a challenging area, to get money out of people for infringement.
"We do use the fines recovery unit process, just so counselors are aware, after a period of time infringements will get referred through to [the NT Government] and they try their best obviously to get the payments out of people as well."
Mr Whiting also said Council had been taking a "sympathetic" approach to those who were having trouble paying their rates because of the COVID-19 lockdown, despite being unable to actually extend the due date.
"We have tried to be a little bit lenient. We are compelled to send reminders to people, so those processes have already gone out ,the reminders, but we're not following it up with the SMS and the text messages as we would normally do," he said.
"The decision was made not to do that with the current COVID climate. We certainly want to push it into people's faces
"As people approach us and they're obviously having some difficulty, we're happy to talk to community members about payment plans and getting back on installments and those sort of arrangements .
"We've certainly got a sympathetic ear."
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