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Thursday, 9 November, 2023
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Garfield the cat returns
Festival of Lights a hit
Tigers up for the test
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Childcare decision looms
Program makes a splash Casey RACE is introducing a fourweek water safety program for women in the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) community with little or no water experience. Starting on Saturday 11 November, the new program will extend the existing informal sessions into a more structured module, making participants more self-assured in their water skills and safety awareness. Story page 6 Swimming teachers, clockwise from left, Kylie, Belinda, Mel and Jasmine. 371316 Picture: ROB CAREW
Councillor count By Violet Li and Emma Xerri A proposed election reform has floated the idea of more Casey councillors, which advocates say would help manage population growth and mitigate donkey voting. The State-appointed Electoral Representation Advisory Panel (ERAP) is conducting a review of Casey Council’s electoral structure under the Local Government Act 2020. The Act stipulates all metropolitan city councils must have single-councillor ward
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cillors and wards. Model One and Two use 11 single-councillor wards with different criteria to define the boundaries, while Model Three has 12 singlecouncillor wards and adopts mainly road and rail infrastructure as ward boundaries. Hampton Park resident Garry Page, who stood for council in 2016, has rejected the 11-councillor consideration and endorsed the 12-councillor model in his 34-page submission. He stated for population reasons alone
there should be 12 councillors. The City of Casey 2019-20 Representation Review Final Report found 12 councillors were required to represent 223,917 voters with an average of 18,660 voters per councillor at the time of the writing, though the recommendation was never adopted due to the dismissal of the councillors in 2020. Now, with 252,670 voters, Mr Page believed downgrading to 11 councillors would represent a step backward with an increase to an average of 22,970 voters. Continued page 4
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electoral structures. It also requires each ward must have an approximately equal number of voters per councillor within plus or minus 10 per cent of the average. Casey Council - which has been governed by administrators rather than councillors since 2020 - currently sits on six wards with a total of 11 councillors. The next councillor elections are scheduled for 2024. In ERAP’s preliminary report, three models have been proposed for the number of coun-
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