The commissioners running the debt-stricken Kaipara District Council will ask Parliament to validate rates they now admit were unlawful.
Some 1100 people are refusing to pay their rates, claiming the council borrowed illegally for the Mangawhai sewerage scheme and failed to consult them about massive rate rises.
The chair of the commissioners, John Robertson, said the council made a series of errors in setting rates between 2008 and this year, involving more than $17 million.
Mr Robertson said local bills have been used in the past by other councils to validate rates set incorrectly, and the commissioners believe that's the best way of resolving Kaipara's problems.
He said said a local bill would give also ratepayers a chance to air their grievances in the neutral forum of a select committee.
The Mangawhai Ratepayers Association said the council did not just make a few technical slips but was acting ultra vires by collecting rates it had no power to strike.
The association said the council was collecting capital charges for the Mangawhai sewerage system two years before it was built, something it has no power to do under the law.
It said Parliament should not be able to validate something for which no legal authority existed to start with.
