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Leave us alone! Despite negative public sentiment and exhaustive submissions detailing the potential detrimental impact of proposed Council mergers, the NSW State Government continues to forge ahead. Lane Cove Council held an extraordinary meeting about the merger on 22 February with many community groups using the opportunity to highlight their concerns and their lack of support for the merger. Overwhelmingly, residents and Council are concerned about the proposed merger’s impact on the sense of community unique to Lane Cove. The groundswell of opposition to the proposed mergers has seen strong support at public rallies and through social media campaigns such as Save Our Councils NSW and Keep Councils Local. From Council’s perspective, it has been a frustrating process. Despite extensive work being done to highlight the efficiencies of Lane Cove Council, General Manager Craig Wrightson says that the facts are being ignored.
"What will happen with our local community groups and organisations?"
By JOCELYN BIDDLE 4 I The Village Observer I N0. 249 I MARCH 2016
“Lane Cove has much to lose if the forced merger does proceed. As one of the most financially viable Council’s in NSW, funds would be redistributed across the merged entity. “It threatens the future of many community groups who currently receive funding from Council, notwithstanding major projects including the Rosenthal development.” Construction on the Rosenthal development is scheduled to start at the beginning of 2017. However, if forced amalgamation proceeds, with the timeline saying that it would take effect from July 2016, it is anyone’s guess what would happen with such planned major capital works. “The biggest risk to Rosenthal is the potential merger process. We have lodged a DA, contracts are in place and it’s in the budget, so it would be hard to unwind, but there is
no commitment from the Government that service levels, existing or upcoming projects are guaranteed. At the end of the day, the new entity could delay the project or pay penalties to cancel it altogether.” Councils throughout NSW were asked to submit the latest of a series of submissions to defend their positions on 28 February. Independent delegates appointed by the State Government are now reviewing each submission. Once assessed, reports from the delegates, together with comments from the Boundary Commission, will go to Paul Toole, Minister for Local Government, to make a decision on whether or not to recommend the implementation of each proposal to the Governor of NSW. Councils are expecting to hear the outcome of this process in May, with the potential for mergers to take effect by July this year. If forced amalgamation does go ahead, the proposed new entity comprising Lane Cove, Hunter’s Hill and Ryde Councils can have a maximum of 15 councillors. Based on head of population, this is likely to mean that Lane Cove may be allocated only 3 councillors to represent its interests (down from the current 9), Hunter’s Hill may have only 1 councillor (down from 7) and Ryde would have the remainder. Local Government elections to vote in the representatives is expected to occur in March 2017. There has been significant media coverage and commentary highlighting the mistakes, inconsistencies, oversimplifications and errors behind the State Government’s modelling that has supposedly shaped the amalgamation agenda. Another sticking point has been the fact that the Minister for Local Government, Paul Toole, spoke out against mergers prior to being elected, saying that they should not be formed by State Government intervention and should only be as a result of mutual agreement. The lack of transparency around the financial imperatives driving the decision is also being seriously questioned. A report commissioned by the State Government and prepared by KPMG has analysed the cost benefit of forced mergers.
