PALERANG Mayor Pete Harrison has challenged many of the State’s spruiked benefits in its reform proposal
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“We’re at pains to point out this is not a merger, it is a boundary adjustment,” he told Tuesday’s inquiry in Goulburn.
“We are not talking about joining two organisations to create a better entity. We’re actually dismantling a council and absorbing it into another.
“But nowhere (in the report) do we see the cost to the community, including the ongoing expenses of dismantling a council, only the ongoing benefits to Goulburn Mulwaree.”
Cr Harrison said the State’s $15m incentive payment was not an “open cheque;” it would merely cover merger expenses. Further, it was not clear whether councils that underwent a boundary adjustment, as opposed to a merger, would receive the money.
Scrutinising the Minister’s figures, his council calculated a 0.1 per cent ongoing financial benefit of the proposal for Palerang.
Cr Harrison said the plan would also dilute the community’s representation, as the portion of Palerang transferred only represented 6.4pc of the total population.
“If Palerang residents don’t even have the numbers to elect a single representative, it’s hard to see how their interests will be represented at all,” he said.
The Mayor maintained the change would also result in the dismantling of a skilled road works team that managed a major RMS contract. The only result would be less road maintenance, not more as the Minister stated, he maintained.
“If these are the high points of the exercise, there’s clearly not much in it for Palerang,” he said.
The council held an extraordinary meeting late yesterday to discuss "recent developments" in local government reform.