Ex-councillors call for demerger

Ex-councillors call for demerger

By MICHAEL FORNO

Four former councillors of the inner west have called on Premier Gladys Berejiklian to reverse Mike Baird’s unpopular council amalgamations.

Caroline Stott, Ted Cassidy, Monica Wangmann and John Stamolis have publicly called on the new government to de-merge the Inner West Council.

Their calls follow Ms Berejiklian’s first cabinet meeting where she signaled that council mergers were due for reconsideration under her leadership.

“I’ve indicated I’m willing to address those concerns across the Liberals and Nationals and obviously across the community. And that’s what we’re doing. No decision has been arrived at. No change in policy at this stage,” she said at a press conference.

Ms Stott, a former councillor of Ashfield, wants the new Premier to be more forthcoming about the amalgamations.

“I don’t know when Ms Berejiklian is actually going to make a proper announcement about this, she seems to be holding off. She has it in the too hard basket and that concerns me,” she told City Hub.

“The bottom line is that we did not support the amalgamation of the councils at all. We now have this lack of representation. In the old council one councillor represented around 3,000 people and it’s now a much bigger number.”

Ted Cassidy, former Mayor of Ashfield, also believes that the Inner West Council can’t adequately serve the area’s needs.

“The interests of all residents and businesses in the inner west would be better served by the reinstatement of the Ashfield, Leichhardt and Marrickville councils as they were prior to their forced amalgamation,” he says.

“Communities of the inner west have a historical expectation that their local Council representative will be a person who they can relate to and an expectation that their interests will be pursued.

John Stamolis, former Leichhardt councillor, says all that is stopping the de-amalgamation process is a lack of political will from Macquarie Street.

“I believe that state government could unravel these right now. They could say, even though this has been done, it hasn’t been done in the right way,

“In the scheme of things we’re only six or so months down the track so I think we could undo this without much trouble. It’s important to remember that organisations and businesses de-merge all the time. It’s not something new, companies are doing it every day,p” he said.

The interim administrator of the Inner West Council, Richard Pearson, isn’t convinced a de-amalgamation would be straightforward.

“You would have to re-recruit a whole management layer. You are reinstituting a cost that the merger was designed to save,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

However for the sacked councillors the amalgamations are a matter of local democracy, not finances.

Ms Wangmann said in a press release:

“Let our community have a direct say in how they are governed. Offer voters a chance to de-amalgamate at, or before the next elections. The Liberal Party understands that council amalgamations are not supported by communities.”

Ms Stott is hopeful that mounting pressure on the Berejiklian Government will result in the de-amalgamation of the merged councils.

“I never give up hope. If the Liberal party wants to get re-elected they will have to do something about the amalgamation issue.”

 

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